Somewhere Between

Somewhere Between is a riveting documentary made by the adoptive mother of a Chinese girl in an attempt to understand what her child's life will be like. Director Linda Goldstein Knowlton follows the lives of four teenage girls who were adopted from China and raised as Americans in different parts of the country. Two major factors make this film far superior to most films of its ilk.

First, the movie's four subjects are exceptionally articulate and candid. I'm aware of the stereotype that adopted Chinese girls are poised, well-spoken, and high-achieving, but these young women are so forthcoming in the extensive interviews that structure the film that I felt I was getting to know not only their confident exterior personas but also the fragile, still-developing women underneath the surface.  The film's interviews depict people from two cultures navigating back and forth between equally important sides of themselves as they try to figure out who they are. All teenagers search for identity, but these young women seem to feel the need more keenly, and as the girls answer Goldstein Knowlton's clear, direct questions, it feels like we're watching them think about certain aspects of their lives for the very first time.

All four stories are engaging and illuminating, but when the narrative zeroes in on one girl’s search for her birth parents in China--a theme that resonates in each story--the results are surprising and profoundly moving. This is the second aspect of the film that makes it more than just by-the-numbers personal journalism: the happenstance that reunites this girl with her birth family would seem unconvincing and forced in a narrative film, but in the documentary form it feels unimpeachable. We become voyeurs, in the truest and best sense of the word, to the complex emotions of all the people in this sequence; their story colors everyone else's in the film, and we are left with a deeper sense of what they feel than we ever could have gotten through interviews alone.