Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Name: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Released: 2011-7-15
Cast: Gianna Jun, Li Bingbing, Vivian Wu, Jiang Wu, Russell Wong

PG-13
1h 45m
2011

21%

age 14+

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From the director of The Joy Luck Club, and based on the best-selling novel, comes a timeless portrait of female friendship. Centuries ago, two “sworn sisters” are isolated by their families, but stay connected through a secret language written in the folds of a white silk fan. Now in modern-day Shanghai, their descendents must draw inspiration from the past as they struggle to maintain their own eternal bond in the face of life’s complications. What unfolds are two stories, generations apart, but everlasting in their universal notion of love, hope and friendship.

Director:

Wayne Wang

Producer:

Wendi Murdoch, Florence Sloan

Writer:

Angela Workman, Ron Bass, Michael Ray

Cast:

Gianna Jun, Li Bingbing, Vivian Wu, Jiang Wu, Russell Wong, Coco Chiang, Jingyun Hu, Archie Kao

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

21%

Reviews

Movie Talk

Jason Best

What hobbles the film is the screenplay's overly strenuous efforts to bind its parallel stories together.

December 6, 2020

FULL REVIEW

Charleston City Paper

Felicia Feaster

Emotionally overwrought and fleetingly campy.

We're told there's deep emotion on the screen, but it's hard to feel it.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a delicate, if sometimes disturbing, portrait of the enduring relationships that bond women together, out in theaters now.

Despite the unevenness, the sincerity of the work shines through.

June 22, 2017

FULL REVIEW

Common Sense Media

age 14+

Common Sense Says

Disappointing literary adaptation has some heavy themes.

What Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this book-based drama set in both present-day and 19th-century China explores complicated but sustaining friendships among women. In some ways, it's an uplifting tale that teens might find interesting, but the storytelling is uneven, and some themes/plot lines -- opium addiction, persecution, pervasive repression of women -- may be too intense for younger viewers. There's some drinking and period-accurate substance abuse; one scene of a married couple having sex shows a man atop a woman, with his naked back visible.