Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, the new film directed by Wayne Wang, is a delicate story told with grace and visual style. Adapted from the recent novel by Lisa See, Wang worked with writers Angela Workman, Ronald Bass and Michael Ray to craft a complex yet coherent screenplay. The novel is set in 19th century China and follows the lives of two young girls from different social classes who are linked together by a relatively unknown form of "women's writing" known as nu shu, roughly translated as "old sames". At seven years of age the village matchmaker pairs up two girls, Snow Flower who comes from a wealthy family and Lily, who's family is from the lower classes. This is especially advantageous to Lily, as it will elevate her standing in the eyes of potential future husbands. Each of the young girls experiences the painful act of foot binding (the breaking of feet to keep them permanently small) and is matched with husbands who will lead them into very different lifestyles. Unable and unwilling to be separated, Lily and Snow Flower use the secret art of nu shu to write to each other, even though they are great distances apart. Carefully applying calligraphic images to a delicate hand fan they share their experiences and are happy for a time. But history and bad fortune tests their friendship and they lose trust and faith in each other.
Wang has made so many films that explore the Chinese-American experience that he is a perfect fit for this story. Chan is Missing, his low budget film from 1982, was a funny narrative with a strong documentary sense of what it was like to be part or the San Francisco Chinese community at that time. The Joy Luck Club (1993) was a caring adaptation of Amy Tan's best-selling novel about four Chinese immigrant families who spend their time playing Mahjong and eating Chinese cuisine. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (2007) was a simple and beautiful story about woman who's father comes to visit her from China and the emotional confusion that this brings to both of their lives. But Wang's skill is more than telling a good Chinese-American story - he is simply a good storyteller. On Smoke (1995), for instance, he worked with writer Paul Auster to capture life on a small Brooklyn street corner, filling the screen with memorable performances by William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Giancarlo Esposito, Stockard Channing. Where the task for most novel adaptations into screenplays is to figure out what to cut away, Wang had the insight to create a parallel story in the modern era that that echoes the experiences of Snow Flower and Lily. The technique of cutting between two stories that are similar in theme but quite different in time and place (historical vs. modern) serves the film well and creates a challenging but rewarding experience as we try to keep up with simultaneous events that are never-the-less taking place hundreds of years apart.
The acting in Snow Flower is first rate. Bingbing Li, seen recently in the Chinese films Forbidden Kingdom and A World Without Thieves, plays Lily in the historical scenes and Nina in the modern scenes. Her characters rise from lower economic households and Li plays each role with confidence and a sense of inevitability that she will come out on top. Gianna Jun (Blood: The Last Vampire, Uninvited) begins life in a privileged position but suffers a financial fall when her father (in each era) leads the family businesses to ruin. Jun does a fine job of portraying Snow Flower and Sofia as women who are too proud to admit how much pain they have suffered at the hands of family and husbands. Late in the film there is a very effective appearance by Hugh Jackman as the club-owning boyfriend of Sofia who does her wrong--but also croons a pop song in both English and Mandarin.
The thread that ties the two stories together is a manuscript that Sofia has written that incorporates her families' experience (feet binding and the writing art of nu shu) in a way that is obviously drawing explicit parallels to her present-day friendship with Nina. In a wonderful justification for using the same actresses to play the modern and historical characters, the story is continually being filtered through the mind of Nina as she reads the manuscript, hoping that Sofia will recover from an accident that has left her in a coma.
Snow Flower takes place in three distinct time periods: 19th century China, Shanghai around 1997 (when Nina and Sofia were kids) and modern day Shanghai. Each time period has a specific look and feeling based on the cinematography and set-design. Wang was inspired by classical Chinese theater to use a static camera with bright costumes and colorful set design for the historical sequences. The scenes depicting Shanghai in the late 1990's were shot mostly hand-held and have an energetic feeling—lots of running and motion between the characters. The present day sequences were shot in muted tones and the camera setups were more cinematically classical—more cutaways and use of standard editing.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a moving film that veers a bit towards the melodramatic at times and makes more than one play for the heart strings (the music is beautiful and seemingly everywhere). Even for viewers with a strong sense of Chinese history it is likely that the secret women's writing technique (nu shu) will be something new. It is a central thread to the story, symbolizing the undying friendship between the two women, and suggesting that women (and men) in the modern era would do well to consider the true nature of friendship and what bonds might be useful to illustrate our affection and concern for each other.
Thomas W. Campbell
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