Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan moves between two eras. In nineteenth-century China, two girls bind themselves to each other as laotong, a lifelong bond arranged between them. Grown into women constrained by custom, they write to one another in a script meant only for female eyes, using a fan to carry their words. In present-day Shanghai, a businesswoman leaves New York for her home city after her closest friend falls into a coma, and the old story becomes a way of reckoning with their own strained relationship.

Wayne Wang directed the film, which followed a run of American productions including Maid in Manhattan, Because of Winn-Dixie and Last Holiday, and marked his return to the Chinese-American themes of The Joy Luck Club. Li Bingbing plays both Lily and the modern Nina, with Jun Ji-hyun as Snow Flower and Sophia; Hugh Jackman, Vivian Wu, Jiang Wu and Russell Wong appear in supporting roles. Ronald Bass, Angela Workman and Michael Ray wrote the screenplay, and Wendi Murdoch and Florence Sloan produced.

The film was a modest performer, taking about a million dollars worldwide against a production mounted between China and the United States. Audiences are split down the middle: on IMDb it holds 6.1 out of 10 from roughly 4,200 votes, and on TMDB the same 6.1 from a much smaller sample. Critics were harsher, giving it 4.5 out of 10 across 89 reviews.