By Russ Fischer/May 13, 2010 9:24 am EST
Wang directed the film from a script by Ron Bass, Angela Workman and Michael Ray, which adapts Lisa See’s novel. The story, as THR describes, is a “cross-generational drama [which] explores female friendship through two relationships separated by more than a hundred years.” In other words, the tale is right in Wayne Wang’s wheelhouse, as he’s done really well in the past with films like The Joy Luck Club, before he dove into studio tripe like Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie.
Here’s a bit about the novel, and beneath that you can see Hugh Jackman performing the same song he sings in the film, on a Jay Leno appearance.
Lily at 80 reflects on her life, beginning with her daughter days in 19th-century rural China. Foot-binding was practiced by all but the poorest families, and the graphic descriptions of it are not for the fainthearted. Yet women had nu shu, their own secret language. At the instigation of a matchmaker, Lily and Snow Flower, a girl from a larger town and supposedly from a well-connected, wealthy family, become laotong, bound together for life. Even after Lily learns that Snow Flower is not from a better family, even when Lily marries above her and Snow Flower beneath her, they remain close, exchanging nu shu written on a fan. When war comes, Lily is separated from her husband and children. She survives the winter helped by Snow Flower’s husband, a lowly butcher, until she is reunited with her family. As the years pass, the women’s relationship changes; Lily grows more powerful in her community, bitter, and harder, until at last she breaks her bond with Snow Flower.
