Review: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

If there is one thing that a melodrama should do, in order to make the viewer feel as though accepting the film’s dramatic liberties is worth the nagging suspension of disbelief, it’s elicit an emotional response. For all the territory the film covers, intercutting between present-day and 19th Century China and focusing on two parallel sets of characters, Wayne Wang’s adaptation of the bestselling novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan fails to accomplish this critical task. It proves an exceptionally damning form of failure, too, because it results in a Catch-22: the cheesy and manipulative conventions of a melodrama are nonetheless present, so the movie’s pursuit of other genres (namely historical fiction) is cheapened.

Complete with a somber musical score by Rachel Portman and the self-important tone of a ‘women’s picture’ of decades ago, the film is the casualty of Wang and his three screenwriters’ flawed presentation. All the elements necessary for a good, old-fashioned weepy are present–believable performances by leads Li Bingbing and Gianna Jun, luscious art direction, and a story with historical substance–but they go nowhere because the film is stillborn. Instead of focusing on the emotions, Wang and company spend their time skating a narrative zig-zag pattern, transitioning between the 19th Century and the New Millenium in such a way that quite a bit happens, but none of it really means much.

It is no surprise that Lisa See’s source novel, beloved by many, did not feature a modern component, as this comes across as unnecessary and distracting in Wang’s version. In the film, the lives of distanced friends Sophia (Jun) and Nina (Bingbing), who were inseparable as kids but grew apart as adults, parallel those of the characters who lived over two centuries earlier, Snow Flower and Lily (played by the same actresses, in more of a gimmick than a legitimate artistic choice). I suspect that most viewers will wonder, as I did, “Why?” We certainly don’t learn anything about Snow Flower and Lily from Sophia and Nina, who are, needless to say, not deep enough to provide meaningful contributions of their own. All they do is interrupt just as the movie introduces an interesting 19th Century construct, such as that of laotongs, girls like Snow Flower and Lily who are paired together from childhood (sometimes regardless of class differences) to help each other navigate a male-dominated world. In fact, the only historical element that Wang spends sufficient time on is the painful process of foot-binding, which is ironically probably the one that Western viewers know the most about.

Alas, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan stands a dull plod towards an empty resolution in which the viewer is lucky to feel anything. (I perked up for a couple minutes when mega-star Hugh Jackman appeared out of nowhere, in a small-but-important role, but otherwise sat there in a vegetative state.) There is a scene involving the death of a child that Wang clearly intends to be the crescendo of the film — and it is, but not because it is the dramatic powerhouse that he designed. Rather, the passage stands out merely because it demonstrates that cinematographer Richard Wong can photograph the hell out of snow. That’s really the gist of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: a lot of pretty pictures, but zero emotional resonance.

* * *

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011; China, USA). Produced by Jessinta Liu, Andrew Loo, Wendi Murdoch, Ted Perkins, Hugo Shong, and Florence Sloan. Directed by Wayne Wang. Written for the screen by Angela Workman, Ron Bass, and Michael K. Ray, based on the novel by Lisa See. Starring Gianna Jun, Li Bingbing, Hugh Jackman, Vivian Wu, Jiang Wu, Russell Wong, Coco Chiang, and Hu Jingyun. Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Rated PG-13, with a running time of 100 minutes.