A simple and true (based on fact, but also and nonetheless true) story of a Chinese peasant girl sold by her father into slavery in the late 19th Century, taught some useful English phrases such as "I live at the saloon," and resettled among the "white demons" of Oregon, where she manages to avoid whoredom but remains unaware that slavery is there prohibited until a black man comes into the saloon one day in quest of a beer. Nancy Kelly, shying off at anything resembling action, directs with strong but never sloppy feeling, and a fresh, never flowery eye. And Rosalind Chao, together with her asymmetrical dimple, is a marvelously expressive actress. Her fugitive moments of happiness inside general petrification are very touching indeed: her first discovery of the gold camp's Chinatown; her first acquaintance with American apple pie; her first rounding-up of a laundry customer as an independent entrepreneur. And talking of what's touching: Chris Cooper, as a gentleman among roughnecks, has one of the most naturally touching faces on the American screen, sort of a cross between Richard Basehart and Ralph Meeker, but a bit more featurelessly worn down, as though by a millennium of wind and sand. (1991) — Duncan Shepherd
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