雪花秘扇

Wayne Wang’s US-China collaboration SNOW FLOWER AND THE SECRET FAN gracefully delves into a recherché Chinese shibboleth of “laotong” - a girl’s sworn sister for life, and constructs two paralleled storylines, one set in the 19th century and another is the present day (evocative of the director’s THE JOY LUCK CLUB, 1993), of two pairs of girls (both played by Li Bingbing and Gianna Jun), about their lifelong friendships.

Shanghai, currently, Nina (Li) is being promoted to a new post in New York by her bank company, along with her colleague-cum-lover Sebastian (Gao), but bad tidings hit when she is apprised that her best friend Sophia (Jun) is in a coma after a traffic accident, rushing to the hospital, and rummaging through Sophia’s belongings, she finds the manuscript of Sophia’s unpublished novel, about two girls’ “laotong” relationship in Hunan Province over one century ago.

During the feudal era, Lily (Li) and Snow Flower (Jun) are arranged to be each other’s “laotong” by a matchmaker when they are just kids - a decision apparently owes much to horology rather than their own initiatives, they sign the contract and communicate with each other through “nü shu”, which means “woman’s script”, written on fans. But in the process of time, their destiny also changes, from a modest family, a married Lily survives a typhoid pandemic and becomes the matriarch of her husband’s household, while Snow Flower’s well-off family descends into obscurity due to her father’s opium addict, and she marries an uncouth butcher (Jiang Wu) who is not above exacting physical punishment when he sees fit.

In both cases, it is Sophia/Snow Flower who sensitively detects the gaping divergence in reality between her and Nina/Lily, and goes out of her way to sacrifice their friendship so that the latter can embrace her brighter future without a burden like her ungainly suffixed. While such action is somewhat irrational and overtly self-punishing on her side, one might detect Sophia/Snow Flower has a masochistic streak that often masks as fortitude (Snow Flower claims that in spite of the domestic violence, she still loves her hubby), that would have made her a more resounding and complex character had the South Korean megastar Jun been able to get out of the listless state perpetually shrouds her.

As a testimonial to pure sororal solidarity, Wang and his scenarists maintain a chaste aesthetic in depicting the sisterly bond (a shared kiss is left on the floor of the editing room), but ailed by a superficial script which fails to mine into more personal aspects of any characters (a counterpoint is Derek Tsang’s much stimulating SOUL MATE, 2016), Jun’s bungling Mandarin and Li’s halting English (there would be no need of find an awkward lingua franca if the two actresses were both fluent in Chinese), SNOW FLOWER… never finds its footing to strike a right chord, everything it depicts falls into easy tokenism (even when the past and present converge), the deplorable “foot binding” tradition, a locker-room revelation almost entirely disintegrates the two girls’ supposed thick-as-thieves closeness, one-note characterization, not just the supporting cast, but Li’s Nina/Lily, who has to do the heavy lifting to retain an emotional arc which feels lopsided and tenuous; worst of all, a cameo by Hugh Jackman shamelessly panders to a westerner’s blinkered orientalism (it is so easy to snog a gorgeous Asian girl and plant his seed), alas, if one really latches onto the subject matter, Hong Kong filmmaker Jacob Cheung’s INTIMATES (1997) would allow a more satisfactory viewing experience to its viewers.

referential entries: Wayne Wang’s THE JOY LUCK CLUB (1993, 7.0/10); Jacob Cheung’s INTIMATES (1997, 6.7/10); Derek Tsang’s SOUL MATE (2016, 7.3/10).