Customer Reviews

Daughter From Danang

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

At the age of 7, Heidi Bub was airshipped to the United States when her mother, a Vietnamese woman, gave her up for adoption. Heidi was Amerasian, a result of a relationship between her mother and a US soldier. Heidi was adopted by a single Southern woman (with whom she is estranged), and grows up with a charming drawl and rather American attitudes. Nevertheless, she wants to find her birth mother. This documentary is about Heidi's reunion with her Vietnamese family. You've probably seen long-lost adoption reunions on the news magazines, that end in happy tears and a 'new family.' This is not one of those reunions.
The documentary eventually turns so depressing that a number of ambiguous questions come up. Was it fair for the filmmakers to even reunite Heidi with her family? What are the intentions of Heidi's Vietnamese family? Is Heidi simply heartless, or does her Vietnamese family ask for too much? Does her birth mother even "deserve" anything, considering she abandoned Heidi?
The film-makers maintain a nonjudgemental attitude throughout the film. Nevertheless, several things are striking. One is the utter poverty of rural Vietnam. Heidi's family at times seems greedy and grasping, but look at their living conditions, and you can understand why. Heidi also seems to possess some of the worst "American" traits: a superficial friendliness coupled by profound aloofness. Heidi's mother is the saddest figure of the film, a woman who is haunted by a series of misguided choices in her life. Just the look on her face as she realizes that she's lost her daughter not once, but twice, is heartbreaking.
No matter what "side" you take in this difficult, depressing film, the ending is chilling. One of the recurring themes of the film is Heidi's soft, cherubic face and her sweet, honey-voiced drawl. At the end of the film, all of that is still there, but her words are so ice-cold that you wonder if the continuing fad of adopting foreign children (first from Vietnam, now from Korea, China, or Romania) does more harm than good. "I don't know them," Heidi says of her Vietnamese relatives. But we, the viewers, do know them, and when Heidi says, "I've closed the door on them, but I haven't locked it," I found myself desperately hoping that one day, she'd open the door again.

Heidi is married to a junior American naval officer and living in military housing on a U.S. naval base with their two young children. But, in 1975, Heidi was Hiep, the 7-year old daughter of Mai Thi Kim, a poor Vietnamese woman living in Danang while her husband was off fighting with the Viet Cong. Hiep's biologic father was an American serviceman, with whom Kim had a relationship in order to keep food on her large family's table. When the U.S. forces scurried for home, they took several thousand children of mixed parentage, including Hiep, with them for adoption in the States in Operation Babylift. Hiep was raised in Pulaski, TN as Heidi by a single mother, who convinced the girl to bury her heritage and grow up American. Now, years later, Heidi wishes to discover the identity of her birth mother, much to her foster mother's horror and eventual estrangement. With the help of the original adoption agency, Heidi locates her long-lost family. DAUGHTER FROM DANANG follows Heidi as she travels to Vietnam in 1997 with a Vietnamese social worker, gifts, and good intentions to meet her birth mother and half-siblings.

What starts out as an emotional and poignant reunion between Heidi and Kim slides steadily downhill as cultures collide and the collateral damage mounts. As Kim cloyingly attaches herself to her daughter's every movement, one can see troubles ahead. I was irritated that Heidi's Vietnamese travel companion/interpreter apparently didn't give her a clue as to the responsibilities inherent to Vietnamese familial ties, and what might be expected of a perceived-to-be-rich American. By the end of the film, the viewer can only feel profound sympathy for all involved, especially as the initial expectations were so extravagantly high.

The history of Kim's family during the Vietnam War is nicely fleshed out with general archival footage of the time and place, e.g. VC on the march, American troops interacting with the locals, the South Vietnamese panic during the U.S. withdrawal, the victorious North Vietnamese forces.

Most of the documentary is comprised of interviews with both Kim and Heidi, as well as a visual record of Heidi's one-week interactive visit to her homeland. The repercussions of Heidi's brief sojourn in the Old Country are emphasized by the last sequence of interviews done two years later.

While watching DAUGHTER FROM DANANG, several tired-but-true aphorisms came to mind: "Be careful what you wish for", "No good deed goes unpunished", and "You can't go home again". Sometimes it's better just to move on.

This documentry reveals a common knowlege about the vietnamese culture, something that i was raised with, being a first generation vietnamese immigrant. vietnamese children are expected to care for thier parents, its a way of life for most asian cultures living the traditional life style. you care for your parents when they are no longer able to work and manage the household, you repay your respects by taking on the family burdens and financial needs. However this film brings an interesting perspective when the daughter is american raised, with american values, and has been seperated from her traditional vietnamese family since she was 5 or 7 years old. its 20 years since her serperation and she's finally reunited with her biological monther and other family memebers. She's abrubtly expected to carry on all the burdens expected by this traditional family.

When my family and I watched this movie, dispite the fact that we come from the same background as the traditional vietnamese family, we completely sympathize with the estranged daughter, feeling who's offended and overwhelmed with her family's bombarding expectactions and rude approaches. This film does an excellent job of documenting an american reaction to the vientamese culture.

I only gave it 4 of 5 stars because its still missing the followup to this reunion.

I've been brooding about this movie for 24 hours and I think I finally have a handle on what made it so horribly disturbing: everyone in it was set up by the filmmakers in such a way as to guarantee drama and real pain that they could package and sell.

Poor Heidi, who has somehow managed to have a good life in spite of everything she's endured, is not the sharpest tool in the shed--she didn't do any homework that could have minimized the culture shock that caused the worst problems with her "homecoming." You can excuse her Vietnamese relatives for not doing their homework--they are busy trying to scratch out a living in very difficult conditions and have had little education. Anyway, that was the only thing you can blame Heidi for.

On the other hand, the filmmakers knew exactly what was in store. They had a handle on both cultures and knew what (and probably when) to expect regarding the inevitable collision.

Vicente Franco and Gail Dolgin should be ashamed of themselves, but I am sure they aren't...their culture rewards this kind of heartless exploitation. It's as different from my culture as Heidi's was from her birth mother's. Thank heavens.

I totally love this movie. Being Vietnamese myself, I understand the way Vietnamese people think (ie. helping family out no matter what). However, I came to the US when I was young just like Heide; therefore, I understand the way she feels. In this movie, Heidi, a mixed child, who came to the US when she was about 7 through an orphanage agency, wanted to find out about her past. She began her journey to find the past with the hope that she could start a relationship with her Vietnamese family. When she went back to VN, she was ready to embrace the love that she has been longing for since she couldn't get it from her adopted mom. You have to understand that Heidi is very Americanized. Besides, she doesn't remember much about her Vietnamese family either. Therefore, when she got to VN and found out that everyone wanted money from her and expected her to help them out, she was shocked. Vietnamese people who still live in VN always want and expect their abroad relatives to help them out. Sometimes, those people don't understand that people abroad don't have a lot of money. You can see in the movie that her biological mom keeps saying that "I come to America with you, ok?" That can say a lot about the mom too. Instead of just let things go easy, everyone bombarded her with things that she would never experience before (sending money home every month to help the mom and siblings, bringing the mom to the US). I don't want to spoil the rest of the movie. So, I am going to cut this short. You should see this movie. I definitely recommend it.

This fascinating documentary tells the story of a woman who was born in Viet Nam but was sent by her mother to live in the US at an early age. As she says, she has been "fully Americanized." So, when she takes a trip back to Viet Nam to meet her mother for the first time in over 20 years, her initial excitement quickly changes to disgust and anger with her family. They expect her to assume responsibility for taking care of the mother financially and they have a difficult time understanding why this upsets her so much. From her perspective, though, it's like this bunch of total strangers are suddenly trying to scam her out of her money.

In looking at some of the other reviews on this page, it's clear that most people watching this movie blame the woman for not making more of an effort to understand her mother. Certainly, it is painful to see how hurt the mother is by her daughter's total rejection of her. But this is a story about two completely different cultures being forced together and I don't think it's entirely fair to blame her. Is she being selfish? Yes. But you have to try to imagine that you're experiencing what she's experiencing and not simply watching it as a viewer. All her life, she's had this image of what her real family would be like and what kind of person her mother was. Plus she's grown up in an incredibly sheltered environment (about half the people in her home town belong to the KKK, to give you an idea of the background she's coming from). How realistic is it to expect her to adapt to the culture of Viet Nam or to accept her family?

It's a sad story to be sure, but if you have any interest in cultural issues, this documentary is powerful stuff.

This movie is about a daughter who is longing to find out her root. However, the reality doesn't always match up with what you hope certain things to be. Heidi, the lost daughter, found out for herself that her Vietnamese family was a bit too much for her to handle. It's a great movie to watch because it talks about relationships that one needs to discover and realize whether one really needs them or not.

The movie was certainly thought provoking. It touches on issues cultural misunderstandings, abandonment, imperialism, and war.

It was easy to hate Heidi at first. She came off as an ignorant "ugly American". But the more I thought about it, I realized that she was much more complicated than that. She was SEVEN years old when she was adopted! That's old enough to have memories of an old life which must have been very traumatizing for her. Add the unloving adopted mother and you have a young woman who's desperate to find a loving mother to take care of her like a little girl. I can see why the family's request was overwhelming for her.

I think the film exploited Heidi though. I think the film makers were so excited about having a "good story" that they were careless in preparing Heidi for the trip. The translator should have prepared Heidi and taught her more about the Vietnamese culture.

Does anyone have any updates on what happened to Ms. Bub? I wonder if she ever re-opened that door.

Heidi Bub is a young American woman who decides to return to Vietnam to meet with her birth mother, Mai Thi Kim, who gave her up for adoption when Heidi was age 7. Heidi was adopted by a cold hearted American woman who told Heidi she was "no longer my daughter" when Heidi came home late from a date. So clearly Heidi is someone with ample reasons to have emotional issues, especially a sense of abandonment.

This provides the context for an intercultural mother-daughter reunion that Heidi is completely unprepared for. It's obvious that Heidi experiences severe cultural shock upon her arrival in Vietnam. She also can't deal with what she perceives as her mother's clinging behavior. Heidi says this makes her feel like she is the mother rather than the daughter. It's obvious that her romantic vision of finally having a mother who would take care of and protect her is hopelessly naive.

Heidi's final and most intense breakdown occurs when her Vietnamese family makes a very direct request for her to support her mother with a monthly financial stipend. My wife is originally from Ecuador, a country that, like Vietnam, places more emphasis on family obligations and taking care of your elders than the individualistic and youth oriented United States. So she felt a strong emotional connection to the Vietnamese family and become intensely upset with Heidi for what she perceived to be Heidi's extreme greediness and selfishness. I, on the other hand, did feel some sympathy for Heidi's circumstances. She was in a totally diiferent culture with people she hardly knew. She clearly was confused and felt that perhaps her birth mother was only looking for financial assistance rather than love. Heidi was, quite possibly, wrong about her mother's intentions. But none of us were there and I think it's impossible to know the truth of the situation. I recommend reading an earlier review by Song Toan, a Vietnamese woman living in Singapore. She says the Vietnamese family were being totally improper in their requests for money from Heidi. So perhaps this really isn't a case of cultural misunderstanding after all.

One of the many great aspects to this documentary is that the film makers remain objective thoroughout and leave it up to the viewer to decide what is truly going on between mother and daughter. This is one of the best and most emotionally powerful docs I have ever seen. Highly recommended!

Controversial, enlightening, and emotionally unsettling. This is what you can expect to experience and more, when you watch this extremely well-made documentary.

The reunion between mother and daughter after more than 20 years of separation begins as tearfully happy and eventually becomes tearfully unsettling. The film describes how Operation Babylift was created and then shows the consequences of that socio-political program on the lives of a Vietnamese child and her estranged mother 20-plus years later. The child is adopted by a single American mother whom we soon discover emotionally abused the little girl and eventually disowned her. The Vietnamese mother has lived all those years with virtually no knowledge of her daughter. This is the backdrop for the highly charged emotional encounter that plays out in front of the viewer's eyes. It's a raw, emotional roller coaster ride for the family and viewers.

I highly recommend this film to those who are willing to grapple with the strong emotions that surround the reunion of an adopted child with the birth parent. The emotions and expectations of all involved are intense. When language and cultural differences are added to such reunions, the emotional stakes become even more highly charged. These are the compelling issues that you can expect to witness and not soon forget when you watch Daughter From Danang. Unquestionably this is a must see documentary.