The
film Bastards reminds us that while in Vietnam
for two decades, many Americans paid Vietnamese women for
sex. An estimated 30,000 children were born as a result of
these encounters. After the American pullout in 1975, these
Amerasian offspring were ostracized within Vietnam, deprived
of schooling, gainful employment, and of course a normal family.
In the film Three Seasons,
we saw one American soldier returning to claim his daughter,
but in Bastards the scene is Westminster, California,
sometimes known as "Vietnam Town." In 1987, Congress passed
the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which provided for the resettlement
of these offspring of mixed ancestry as nonquota immigrants
with refugee program benefits, but some children had to manage
without a father or a mother. The Immigration and Naturalization
Service was their parent, providing food stamps, access to
welfare benefits, housing, English language instruction, and
assistance in locating absent fathers. Director Loc Do’s aim
is to show us exactly how these Amerasians live; the tagline
of the film is "From Saigon, Vietnam, to Little Saigon, California."
The film focuses on two brothers who work as busboy and dishwasher
in a Vietnamese restaurant. Tony (played by Tuan Tran), plagued
by nightmares, not satisfied to be a mere busboy and angry
that his father never found him, and with a tattoo on his
chest that says "Unloved Young People" in Vietnamese, finds
a family within a gang that burglarizes Vietnamese merchants.
Tien (played by Christopher Lance) wants to work hard, take
care of his troubled brother, and make a good life while spending
hours each day telephoning everyone throughout the United
States with the name "McCale" in order to locate their father.
As the film plays out, we see part-Vietnamese whose fathers
were black as well as white, young Amerasian women who try
to comfort their boyfriends, and even Vietnamese merchants
who show compassion toward the burglars. Those who have been
to Vietnam in the last two decades, who have seen Amerasians
begging to be discovered by American visitors as their children
in front of hotels and at orphanages, will easily be caught
up in the emotions of the film. Eventually, Tien finds his
father, who comes to visit. Aside from the sensitive portrayal
of gang life, the most intriguing part of the film is how
Tony at first cannot accept his father but becomes transformed
by the end of the film, evidently realizing that he must forgive
his father to get beyond the terrible traumas that have governed
his life so long. Bastards, which gained some
notoriety for special screenings in 1996, was first released
to the general public in Los Angeles for a week during June
1999, doubtless to ride the coattails of Three Seasons.
As the film ends, screen titles tell us (as of 1995) that
of the 30,000 Amerasians, 10,000 are still in Vietnam, and
only 300 had succeeded in locating their fathers. MH
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