Curious timing: About an hour after watching Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi, throw a roundhouse punch at the moron who tried the old pie-in-the-face gag on her husband during the latter’s testimony before Parliament, I sat down at a press screening for a new movie, “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.”
That name in the credit–“Produced by Wendi Murdoch”–that couldn’t be … could it? Sure enough, this film released by Fox Searchlight is the first production credit for the wife of the media mogul and owner of the Fox entertainment behemoth.
Time will tell whether Wendi Murdoch has more of a future as a movie producer or a boxer, but “Snow Flower” doesn’t register much on the excitement scale. Extremely handsome but top-heavy with plot, the film presents a story of friendship, in which the friendship must be taken on faith.
It’s based on a novel by Lisa See, but with a new wrinkle added: While the book traced the lifelong devotion of two women in 19th-century China, the movie invents a parallel plot about two friends (played by the same actresses) in present-day Shanghai.
Neither story is convincing, but at least the costume-drama-half of it provides the scenic pleasures of eye-filling art direction. It also touches on the painful custom of foot binding, a practice that allows one lower-class character (played by thoughtful Li Bingbing) to rise in status: Her tiny feet make her marriageable to a distinguished man.
The reason for the dual stories is that Li’s character in the modern section is reading a period novel written by her best friend (South Korea’s Gianna Jun). So she comes to appreciate what a “laotong” really means: a female friendship (as the movie laboriously explains to us) just as significant as a marriage.
Here’s the problem. That laotong — in past and present — becomes the excuse for a great deal of poor decisionmaking and self-sacrifice in the plotlines. We rarely get a glimpse of how these female friendships really come to life or grow rich in experience.
Because that material is absent (maybe some of it was in the novel), we simply have to accept the deep bond, and plod from crisis to crisis. Most of which is spelled out in clumsy exposition, after which an emotional scene will follow.
Director Wayne Wang, relying heavily on the violin strings of Rachel Portman’s score, can only go from one such situation to the next. And the fact we’re skipping back and forth in time doesn’t help the flow.
“Snow Flower” also has an extended cameo from Hugh Jackman, who sings a song. Please trust me: That is not as intriguing as it sounds.
“Snow Flower and the Secret Fan”
The 19th-century female friendship described in Lisa See’s novel is joined by a parallel story set in the present day for the film adaptation; but neither plot, crammed with incident, really comes to life. Li Bingbing and Gianna Jun play the main roles in both stories.
Rated: PG-13 for violence, subject matter
Showing: Pacific Place, Seven Gables
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