Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011)
A story set in 19th century China and centered on the lifelong friendship between two girls who develop their own secret code as a way to contend with the rigid cultural norms imposed on women.
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Wonderful character development!
A lot of fun.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Wonderful book, bad movie. The screenwriters failed to successfully transfer a beautiful story, rich with culture and deep relationships, to the big screen
The film parallels two friends in the now with the similar pair a century ago linked through a friendship of the bound feet. The bound feet was some sort of sexual fetishism of men during a period in China. It was well regarded for marriage. The stories are somewhat superficial otherwise though with little rationale sometimes. Good for the exotism and historical education nevertheless.
Not having seen "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" before now in 2015 was a really big mistake on my account, because this movie is nothing short of spectacular. This is really a beautiful movie, and it is a definite must watch for anyone who enjoy cinema that offers something astounding.The movie is really nicely set up as it skips back and forth between present day China and ancient China, as we follow two sisters in the heart throughout the ages. And director Wayne Wang captured some really beautiful moments of sisterhood, love, friendship and loyalty."Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" has a really good cast, and I must admit that I was more than pleasantly surprised to see talented Korean actresse Ji-hyun Jun starring in this movie, and she really carried the movie so well. And right up there beside her was Bingbing Li with her equally impressive performance. Put together Jun and Li really shined on the screen with amazing chemistry.A movie is nothing with a proper soundtrack, and the music in "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" was majestic and almost ethereal. The score for this movie was so well-composed and complimented the movie quite well.The wardrobe, setting and scenery for "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" was quite good, and there was a lot of nice details to be found in just about every scene.This is a very emotional story that was quite nicely put on the screen by director Wayne Wang, and the movie does spur an interest to read Lisa See's novel to fully get every detail to this story that spans the ages."Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" is a beautiful movie that is well-worth watching and should be watched by anyone who enjoy the finer moments in cinema.
The book explores the culture of 19th century China through a woman's eyes; in the book you see real relationships and heartbreak. The movie squanders all of that in favor of appearing "artistic" or "deep"; something it does not pull off at all.They unnecessarily add some modern characters to "parallel" the girls from the book. Said modern characters randomly switch between speaking Chinese and English, adding to the overall confusion and mess of the movie. The movie constantly switches back and forth from the modern to the actual book story line, making it extremely hard to follow, even for someone who has read the book. This also means that you make no real attachment to any of the characters. They change lines around and only include scenes of "significance" from the book- making it all completely insignificant. You get no sense of the deep-heart love they speak of. You barely see the characters at all.Overall, it is essentially two hours of thinking, "Is the movie going to start yet?"A real waste of an amazing book.