Mulberry Child

There's a universal story here about immigrant parents and children, and how American culture can swamp family traditions, and make parents and children culturally unrecognizable to one another.

In the film based on her memoir Mulberry Child, Jian Ping speaks of her family's ordeal during the Cultural Revolution with searing detail and not an ounce of sentimentality. The same can't be said of director Susan Morgan Cooper's heavy-handed approach to the material.

A documentary -- based in part on Jian Ping's autobiographical book of the same name -- whose poignancy is lessened by its awkward formal devices.

The film's subject matter is epochal, its delivery less so.