'The Beautiful Country'

Even if he wanted to, it would be impossible for Binh to hide his heritage. His height and facial features broadcast the fact he had a Vietnamese mother and an American father, long gone.

	Bai Ling in "The Beautiful Country." Click photo for larger image.

That makes him "bui doi" or "less than dust" in 1990 Vietnam, one of the backdrops of "The Beautiful Country". Women once advised their children not to play with the boy with the face of the enemy.

For most of his life, Binh didn't know the whereabouts of his mother, but he locates her in what will be the shortest leg of a long, physically and emotionally taxing journey. Their reunion is joyous but short-lived, and an accident sends Binh and a young half-brother, Tam, fleeing for what their mother hopes will be a better life. "Keep a good heart," she tells Binh.

He tries to follow that advice as he and Tam set off in a fishing vessel and end up in a refugee camp in Malaysia, where they encounter a beautiful world-weary Chinese prostitute. They make their way to a ship smuggling refugees, but the American dream tarnishes in the face of greed, inhumanity, indifference, starvation and illness.

Directed by Norwegian Hans Petter Moland, "Beautiful Country" features established stars Bai Ling, Tim Roth and Nick Nolte -- all excellent -- but it's Damien Nguyen as Binh who resides at its heart. His passage from one beautiful country to another, with its turns both sad and bittersweet, allows us to examine what family, acceptance, love, freedom, homeland, success and America mean.

At just over two hours, "Beautiful Country" moves slowly, but it's about the journey as much as the destination.

Rated R for some language and a crude sexual reference. At the Manor Theater.

-- Barbara Vancheri

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'Eros'

Say I'm not a romantic. You wouldn't be the first.

But I confess that I don't get "Eros,", a collection of three short films by Kar Wai Wong, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. Sure, each short explores an aspect of romantic love as written and filmed by world-class directors. But I expected more thematic linkage than well-drawn illustrations at the segues and what the film's French producers describe as "a trilogy with eros as the subject."

"Eros" begins with Kar Wai's "The Hand," a wonderful story of the unrequited love dividing and yet forever linking a naive Hong Kong tailor and the libertine courtesan who buys his dresses. The same hand that arouses him as a boy and brushes him off as a man clings to his hand when she grows older and sickly. Chang Chen of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" gives his character great nuance in a compelling short that should be a full-length feature. It's in Mandarin with English subtitles.

Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin spar in "Equilibrium," a short bit of bland sketch comedy claiming to be something more. Filmed by Soderbergh in black-and-white noir, Downey is a whining patient recalling a failed romance while his disinterested psychiatrist finds something more interesting out the window.

The segment I understand the least is Italian director Antonioni's "The Dangerous Thread of Things." A couple quarrel in Italian, he has sex with the neighbor, she dances naked on the beach ...

Huh? I thought there was more to love than that.

Rating: R for strong sexual content including graphic nudity, and for language. At the Oaks Theater.

-- John Hayes