The Beautiful Country

The Beautiful Country (Director: Hans Petter Moland)

Moland is a Norwegian filmmaker. He has a few credits but nothing you've probably heard. The story comes from screenwriter Sabina Murray and Lingard Jervey. This film got a limited US release date starting July 8 and it has come briefly to Nashville--it will be gone after today.

This is a coming-to-America saga, beginning in early-90s Vietnam. Binh (Damien Nguyen) is a young man looking for his place in the world. His mother Mai (Thi Kim Xuan Chau) was once married to a GI named Steve (Nick Nolte), who left mysteriously after Binh was born. In Vietnam, a child with an American father is regarded as "less than dust." The journey Binh must take to find his mother and then his father in America is, of course, laden with obstacles. He finds his mother and gets thankless work at a "big house," where the masters are evil and spoiled, and then we he needs to leave there, a boat trip takes him to Malaysia and a refugee camp where he meets Ling (scrumptious Bai Ling). Ling works as a prostitute on the inside, and her work leads to another boat trip (captained by Tim Roth) where refugees hope to be sent to work in America for little or no wages in exchange for a place to stay. Soon after, Binh strikes out to find his father.

It really is a nice adventure story, one that keeps moving place to place. It is always interesting even though it can, on occasion, slip into a slow pace now and then. Damien Nguyen is great as the main character, as is Ling, and the usual good work comes from Roth and Nolte. There's an extremely good piece of acting when Binh tries to extract information from Steve's ex-wife (Libby Vallari). Vallari has played a lot of small character roles (and I had never heard of her), but this one is a breakthrough.

If you're in the mood for a drama like this one, try to find it on video in the near future. It's very good.