Jeffrey Kramer, the director of Smile, was so impressed by his teenage daughter's experiences as a volunteer with an overseas medical charity, Operation Smile, that he decided to make a film to publicize opportunities available to enterprising teenagers of Generation X. The film initially focuses on two dysfunctional families, one in Jingxi, a working-class provincial town about an hour from Shanghai, the other in affluent Malibu. When the film begins, Daniel (played by Luoyong Wang) finds a baby girl who has been abandoned in a stack of wheat. He takes the baby, who has been born with a facial deformity, home to a mother and son. On Lin's seventh birthday, he brings a birthday cake home, but the mother is upset about the celebration, and Daniel criticizes the boy for beginning to eat the cake before the meal starts. An argument ensues, in which the mother castigates Daniel for favoring his own son over the adopted girl, and in the morning the two depart, leaving Daniel to care for Lin. Accustomed to wearing a veil over her face Lin is tutored in English by her father, who hopes that she will get a college degree some day. At the age of sixteen, Daniel takes Lin (now played by Yi Ding) to a free clinic in Shanghai for a plastic surgery operation; en route, however, he is nearly run down by a city bus, breaks his arm, and shows up at the clinic after the physicians have departed. Salt Lake City volunteer nurse Linda (played by Cheri Oteri), nevertheless, patches him up. One year later, he again writes a letter to apply for an operation for Lin, but the latter tears up the letter, fearing that another mishap may occur that will leave her without a protector. That same year, Daniel runs into his estranged wife; although she reports that their son is married and has produced a grandchild, she remains adamant about the separation. Meanwhile, Katie (played by Mika Boorem) is a seventeen-year-old student at Malibu High School. Steven, her father (played by Beau Bridges), is a psychiatrist, but her mother (played by Linda Hamilton) expresses a lack of self-esteem by lashing out verbally at her husband and, less frequently, at her daughter. Katie also argues over a small matter with her boyfriend, who patiently awaits the day when she will allow him to have sex with her. One day, high school instructor Matthews (played by Sean Astin) tries to recruit students, who must complete three hundred hours of community service before graduation, to participate in Doctor's Gift, an organization that performs free plastic surgery on children in China, the Philippines, and Thailand. In response to some questions from Katie about the program, Matthews gives her the file of Lin, whose case touched him deeply the previous year when she arrived with her father too late for surgery. Tired of arguments between her parents and with her boyfriend, Katie decides to go to Shanghai during the summer, seeking an epiphany. Without telling anyone, she has become fascinated with the fact that she and Lin were born on exactly the same day. She then boards a flight to Shanghai and meets Linda on an adjacent seat. During the first day at the clinic, tears quickly flow down Katie's cheeks as she encounters the deformed children, who otherwise appear so happy and lovable. All her life, Katie has felt awkward, dependent, and unable to identify a life goal, but something inside her clicks when, again secretly, she realizes that Lin is not on the current list of those who are scheduled for surgery. Accordingly, Katie sneaks away from the hotel that night and finds her way in a strange country by bus and train to the exact house where Lin lives with her father. Returning home from work, Daniel is puzzled as Katie watches for Lin. After asking her to join him for tea, he learns the reason for her trip, including the coincidental birthday, and encourages Katie to approach Lin at home so that they can become better acquainted. The ploy works, and Lin agrees to go to Shanghai for the operation. However, Katie has gone AWOL from Doctor's Gift, raising concerns about her safety and whereabouts. Soon, Linda and others in the volunteer group figure out that she must be on her way to Lin, and they meet up en route. Next comes the operation, and the film ends with photographs of the beautiful face reconstructed by plastic surgery. Several themes are effectively dramatized by Smile, the tagline of which is "Based on 8,000 True Stories." For audiences in China, the lesson is that Americans may have more compassion for those who are physically deformed than Chinese. In the United States, Katie's epiphany says that many Americans are so concerned about themselves that they do not realize that they can do a lot of good in a world of real problems of real people. Released at the time of spring break, Smile presents a coming-of-age experience for American teenagers that offers more promise for a better country and world than a week of booze and sex. However, the film stops short of showing exactly how the experience changes Katie's life when she returns for her senior year in high school, graduates, and goes on to college. Titles at the end, making that point, are missing. MH
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