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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

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China, United States · 2011
Rated PG-13 · 1h 44m
Director Wayne Wang
Starring Li Bingbing, Jun Ji-hyun, Hugh Jackman, Vivian Wu
Genre Drama, History

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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What are critics saying?

50

The A.V. Club by

This latest film aims for "The Joy Luck Club's" crossover appeal but ends up stilted and emotionally remote.

50

USA Today by Claudia Puig

The lesson of the lovely-looking, but disappointing, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is avoid tinkering too much with a novelist's work.

40

Time Out by David Fear

Set mostly in modern-day Shanghai and involving two other girlfriends (also Li and Jun), this parallel plot feels less like an attempt to broaden the book's horizons than to cash in on "Joy's" cross-generational appeal while doubling down on cheap-shot melodrama.

38

Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo

Despite gestures toward modernity and clumsy humanism, the film feels regressive, presenting a version of modern China that's as much of an anesthetized fairy tale as its costume-drama past.

50

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

While the action flashes back and forth in increments of centuries, years or months, we're adrift in the here and now, trying to get a grip on the characters and their relationships, yet finding it loosened with every new dislocation.

50

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

There are enough decent moments in "Snow Flower" that you can at times see the remains of a better movie amid the jolting transitions between past and present, but these eras never really speak to each other, much less to you.

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