 |
|
Mai's America is an intimate portrait of Mai — a spunky, mini-skirted daughter of Ho Chi Minh's revolution. We meet Mai and her cosmopolitan family in communist Hanoi . Mai is proud that her father fought in the American War, defeating both the U.S. and “their pawns,” the South Vietnamese. More than anything, she wants to make her family proud of her. So, fueled by the opportunity for a better education and enticed by MTV inspired visions of America , Mai travels to the United States for her senior year of high school.
Nothing in her wildest imagination prepares Mai for her crash landing in rural Mississippi …where her relationships with white Pentecostal and black Baptist host-families, self-proclaimed red-necks, transvestites, and South Vietnamese immigrants challenge her long-held ideas about America , about herself, about freedom, and even about Vietnam.
Mai's America is Marlo Poras’ first film. Working alone, without a crew, she followed Mai for 2 1/2 years, filming over 150 hours of Mai's remarkable journey in Mississippi , New Orleans , Detroit and Vietnam.
From the start, Marlo envisioned Mai's America as an intimate portrait film, with no interviewers or outside narrators. Wanting the audience to experience Mai's adventure close up, as Mai experiences it, Marlo kept radio microphones on Mai at all times. Armed with her unobtrusive but ever-present camera, Marlo captured the ordinary and sometimes extraordinary moments of Mai's everyday life.
Mai arrives in rural Mississippi excited, looking forward to bonding with her self-proclaimed redneck host family. The father is
on disability and the mother is being treated for depression. Mai quickly realizes that she is expected to be a companion for their sullen teenage daughter, Kim. Despite Mai’s valiant attempts to develop a rapport with Kim and her parents, they seem to show little interest in her. Mai cannot understand why her host family acts like they would rather sit on the couch and watch TV than talk with her or even with each other.
In school, Mai's American history class studies the Vietnam War. Through the efforts of a remarkable teacher who uses Mai to teach students about the Vietnamese perspective, Mai actually begins to understand the War from her former enemy’s point of view. Mai had been taught from childhood to think of American soldiers as cruel, unfeeling killers. She realizes, though, that the soldiers were just teenagers like the boys in her class, who found themselves in the middle of a war, far from home, without a clear understanding of why they were there. Mai is deeply touched by this insight and reaches out to the class by teaching them the song about Ho Chi Minh that she and her family sang together before she left for America.
Despite Mai’s efforts to make friends at school, she feels very much the outsider and misses the effortless feeling of belonging that she had in Vietnam . Mai tags along with Kim and her boyfriend when they go to a nightclub where Chris (a.k.a. “Christy”), a vivid and perceptive gospel singing gay transvestite, is performing. Mistaking Mai for a boy, Chris comes over to flirt and ends up being charmed by her. The strong feelings between these two outsiders are mutual and Mai makes her first true friend in Mississippi . No longer lonely, Mai and Chris have heart-to-heart talks as they laugh, dance, and put on makeup. Chris thinks Mai is fabulous and invites her to his drag show; Mai has a crush on Chris and invites him to her prom.
Mai's window on the world opens even wider when she comes to know Tommy, an animated South Vietnamese immigrant whose father fought alongside the Americans before fleeing Saigon with his family to the States in 1975, when Tommy was three. Mai and Tommy, the children of former enemies, have spirited conversations about the war. Tommy confides that he has always yearned to visit Vietnam , but fears that because he grew up in United States , he might not be welcomed in the land of his birth. Choosing honesty over patriotism, Mai acknowledges that Tommy might indeed face discrimination there.
When Tommy takes Mai to a South Vietnamese celebration in a nearby town, she is saddened to feel like an outsider again — especially in a room filled with people from her country. She observes that many Vietnamese Americans who escaped Vietnam during the War years seem to cling to the Vietnamese lifestyle that they knew before the war; a culture that seems confusingly foreign to Mai, who finds it vastly different from the Vietnam she grew up in.
When Mai's solitary life with her host family becomes unbearable, she requests a change of residence and is placed nearby with a young African American couple — Latoya, 20, her husband Justin, 23, and their 4-month-old baby. The new host family welcomes Mai into their home and includes her in family activities. Latoya and Justin take Mai to their Baptist Church , roller-skating and bowling, and she meets dozens of their relatives and friends.
But her own family in Vietnam is what fills Mai’s thoughts when she is accepted at Tulane University with only a half-scholarship. Mai worries about the financial burden her education would place on her parents and she is acutely aware of the many opportunities she would lose if she returns to Vietnam without an American college diploma. Mai believes with all her heart that her parents will remain proud of her and will find a way to afford the rest of the tuition.
It isn’t until Tommy returns from his first trip ever back to Vietnam , rhapsodizing about the thrill of looking like everyone around him and of feeling like he finally belonged, that Mai is able to face her own fears. She tells Tommy that Vietnam is not an easy place to be a nobody; she pushes him to acknowledge that if either one of them had to be poor, they’d be infinitely better off in America with government programs like welfare and social security than in an underdeveloped country like Vietnam.
Soon after her talk with Tommy, Mai is stunned to learn that Justin and Latoya, who at first seemed so happy, are planning to divorce. When Mai turns to her friend Chris to make sense of all the changes surrounding her, he shocks her with a big change of his own. He confides in Mai that his life as “Christy,” the drag queen, is over, that he has decided to return to the Pentecostal Church and become a man again. Mai is stunned. When Chris tries to convince Mai that killing her beloved “Christy” is actually a healthy step for him, everything Mai thought she believed in or depended on seems to begin to unravel: in school, her childhood myths of heartless American soldiers are being replaced by feelings of commonality and compassion; through Tommy, former enemies have become her friends, yet she feels like an outsider when surrounded by Vietnamese Americans; and then Chris asks her to believe that "Christy,” the one person in America who understood her, is better off dead.
Mai begins her freshman year at Tulane University as a very different girl than the rich, carefree high school student she had been the year before. Her parents make it clear that they can only pay tuition for one year of Tulane. They press Mai to find a job. With no one to turn to for support but herself, she takes a job waitressing nights at a Chinese restaurant. None of her friends in Vietnam had to work and Mai had not been raised to expect to serve people or to be bossed around and talked down to. Mai complains but she perseveres.
Mai tries to become friends with her African American roommates, but exhausted by the long hours spent working and studying, she often misunderstands and feels unable to keep up with their conversations. Her insecurities begin to take hold of her and she wonders why they, or anyone else, would want to be friends with her.
Mai’s self-confidence continues to erode. She has trouble studying. By the end of the semester, Mai wants desperately to go home — but her parents make it clear that her failure to finish college in the States would shame them if she returns to Hanoi . They suggest strongly that Mai move to Detroit to get a job with the son of people they know at his nail salon. They tell Mai that the son makes good money and they encourage Mai to follow in his footsteps so she can eventually pay for her own education.
A lonely and despondent Mai turns to the North Vietnamese community in Detroit. When they embrace her, Mai takes solace in knowing that she is not alone, that there are others like her struggling in America . No longer an outsider, Mai finds support from young men and women like herself who feel conflicted by the opportunities here, the expectations of their families, and the yearning they feel to go home. In conversations with her new friends, Mai comes to understand that everyone makes sacrifices; her parents made sacrifices for her to come to America to have a chance to be successful, and now she is making sacrifices so that her parents will be proud when she goes home.
Working in the nail salon, Mai is reminded again of the shoeshine boy in Vietnam. Now she too is on her own, providing for her own future. But she can see beyond their similarities and is able to find strength in how far she has come. She is aware of how much education she already has behind her, and she also realizes that she has the one thing that every immigrant who comes to America has — an opportunity.
The film ends with Mai sanding the calluses of an outrageous, heavily made up bleached blonde. Seated at her client’s feet, carefully painting her toenails with crimson polish, Mai smiles up at the woman and says wistfully, “You remind me of my friend Christy.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
