---

Mai's America (2001)
documentary, directed by Marlo Poras

Described in the production notes as "an intimate portrait of Mai, a spunky, mini-skirted daughter of Ho Chi Minh's revolution," Marlo Poras' Mai's America is an alarming documentary following spunky high school senior Mai as she comes to the United States on an exchange program to a high school in rural Mississippi. Unsure that I, born and raised in the United States, would survive such a cultural shock, that Mai manages to navigate the dire straights of proud "redneckism" ("My host parents say that a good redneck works very hard to make a living. I'm not sure that my host parents are good rednecks") and the somehow even more macabre peculiarities of the Deep South is a testament to the human capability for adaptation and endurance. Who let John Waters preside over a student exchange program?

Rather than an extended freak show, however, Mai's America becomes something of a process of understanding for the somewhat arrogant Mai, her conviction that America is full of murderous aggressors leavened by the reality that this part of America is full of slack-jawed yokels. (The murderous aggressor part of America is apparently elsewhere.) Points of interest include a well-intentioned history teacher taking Mai on a tour of the wealthier Mississippi neighbourhoods so that she sees that "America is more than what [her] host family represents"; wide-eyed descriptions of her first house-sister's and mother's manic depression ("I don't know what's wrong with Kim"); Mai teaching a roomful of Mississippi classmates the North Vietnamese national anthem; her interaction with her second host family (a very nice southern Baptist couple); and her befriending of a kindly tranvestite that demonstrates the emotional kinship of strangers in a strange land while providing the film with an extremely strong structure, the funniest line, and a surprisingly rich subtext.

With subjects as unusual and perverse as any found in Errol Morris, when Mai's America follows Mai to New Orleans on a visit to a fellow Vietnamese exchange student (including the requisite visit to Bourbon Street's motley collection of crackpots and hucksters), it reaches a level of quiet brilliance and universality that is difficult to articulate. Mai's America is what the documentary format can accomplish: a fascinating topic guided by a keen eye and an invaluable bit of cultural anthropology.***1/2 (out of four)