Based on a true story, Nancy Kelly’s fascinating American independent feature, written by Anne Makepeace and set in the 1880s, portrays a beautiful young Chinese woman (Rosalind Chao) sold into slavery by her destitute father and auctioned off in San Francisco to a mule skinner, who purchases her for a saloon keeper in a mining town in the northern Rockies. She and the mule skinner fall in love en route to their destination, but he delivers her to the saloon keeper nonetheless, and the ensuing story, with dialogue in Cantonese as well as English, depicts the woman’s courage and resourcefulness in creating a life for herself (1990). (JR)