Somewhere Between

Filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton appears (briefly) here to give a personal mission statement: namely, that as she has just adopted a baby girl from China, this film will later serve as a message to her daughter about her cross-cultural heritage. Somewhere Between focuses on four Chinese-American adolescent girls who were among the 80,000 Chinese babies who have become members of families in the United States since 1989. Over the course of its three-year-long narrative arc, the documentary gradually becomes an exposé, revealing that while on paper these children were "orphans," many of them came from intact peasant families, where females are discarded in the search for a male heir (while also complying with Beijing's one-child-per-household dictates). The adoptees shown here—assimilated in affluent households from California to Tennessee—gravitate back towards China as they mature, to help out other abandoned infants, and (in a remarkably million-to-one case) a teen reunites with her biological parents. While this turn of events serves up an especially heartfelt emotional jolt, the questions of racial identity and pluralism in America begin to recede into the background as the story shifts to international adoption and child-welfare drama. Regardless, the quartet of “somewhere between” heroines followed here will not soon be forgotten by viewers of this often powerful documentary. DVD extras include interviews with adoption professionals, and deleted and extended scenes. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)