EVERY
PICTURE TELLS
A STORY
Part 3 of 4
(When Will the "Yellow Ceiling" be Raised) Film Review: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
It is interesting noting
the interest of the Asian Pacific American entertainment
communities in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Given the
participation of producers Wendi Murdoch/Florence Sloan,
director Wayne Wang, author Lisa See, actors Russell Wong/Archie
Kao and cinematographer Richard Wong - should one expect
support from the Asian Pacific American communities?
LI
BINGBING
Li
Bingbing's film debut was Zhang Yuan’s SEVENTEEN
YEARS in 1999, which won her the Best Actress in
the 1999 Singapore Film Festival. In 2001, Li starred
in the television series “Young Justice Bao,”
which propelled her to become one of the most famous
actresses in China. That year she was awarded the
title of one of the Top Ten Best TV Actors/Actresses
in China. She approbated as an “action actress”
as she starred in a number of Wuxia television drama,
such as “Taiji Prodigy” and “Eight
Heroes.” Li starred in the 2004 romantic comedy
film WAITING ALONE that received three Chinese Academy
Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best
Actress.
Li
won the title of Most Popular Actress at 2004's
12th Beijing College Film Festival. \Li won the
Best Actress Award at the 2007 Huabiao Awards and
at the Hundred Flowers for her performance in THE
KNOT. She also co-starred with Jet Li and Jackie
Chan in the 2008 film THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM as the
White-haired Witch Ni-Chang. In November 2009, Li
won the Best Leading Actress Award at the 46th Golden
Horse Film Awards for her role in the espionage
spy thriller THE MESSAGE.
Li’s recent performance include the role of
Shangguan Jing’er in Tsui Hark’s 2010
film, DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM
FLAME. Her character in this movie is loosely based
on Shangguan Wan’er, who was a poet, writer
and politician of the Tang Dynasty. In 2011, Li
appeared in "The 1911 Revolution" ("Xin
Hai Ge Ming") with Jackie Chan.
LI
BINGBING UTILIZED HER TALENTS
as one of China’s best actresses (Detective Dee
and the Phantom Flame, 1911 and many others) to try to
give the needed substance to her characters of Nina and
Snow Flower, especially when speaking Mandarin. Her comfort
level in English was an obstacle when portraying the various
nuances of life in modern Shanghai. South Korea's Gianna
Jun (aka Jeon Ji-hyeon) faced greater obstacles when asked
to act in two languages she's not comfortable in –
acknowledging that her Mandarin dialogue was a voice-over.
At other times, she provides exquisitely haunting moments
as Sophia and Lily – plus she gets to kiss Hugh
Jackman.
THE
PARALLEL MODERN STORY did
include the addition of the just-mentioned Hugh Jackman
(Sophia’s American boyfriend - via a personal favor
from Wendi Murdoch) for four minutes, Russell Wong (her
boss at the bank), Archie Kao (friend from the bank),
Vivian Wu (Sophia’s aunt) while making Gianna Jun’s
character a Chinese who was born in South Korea. Their
participation provided opportunities for the film to gather
traction with American audiences, with Mr. Jackman’s
singing of a song in Mandarin was an unexpected delight
– though one wonders why it was included. It is
unimaginable why “Nina” (or anybody else)
would disapprove of Hugh Jackman’s “Arthur”
as being Sophia’s BF (boyfriend) – not matter
what the circumstances were!!
WAYNE WANG WAS
SELECTED by Florence Sloan and Wendi Murdoch
to produce a film that has the potential to change how
one sees the world and Chinese Cinema with a compelling
vision and style that cuts across films, genres and time
periods. He sought to travel the path of past great film
directors by displaying their ambitions and high level
of story-telling – along with Licontinuing their
reputation of being a consummate craftsman who has endowed
one’s work with meticulous attention to detail,
an intuitive gift for casting and a preoccupation with
the moral dilemmas of the story’s characters that
includes a profound penchant for realism and authenticity.
With his top priority seemingly to place his need to be
a greater storyteller than his described Chinese predecessors;
his above-stated ambitions clouded and disguised the essence
of Lisa See’s book with a static expression in literary
revisionism. The edges and depth of the original story
were eliminated when the novel’s disturbing gruesome-sounding
depictions of the foot binding (that led to the death
of Lily’s sister), Snow Flower’s multiple
miscarriages, the hinted sexual attraction between Lily
and Snow Flower, the portrayal of sexual marital pleasures
within Snow Flower’s marriage and the kissing scene
with Nina and Sophia. The creative decision to utilize
a new “modern story” displayed an ambition
similar to recent movies such as Woody Allen’s “Midnight
in Paris.” Where Woody Allen’s “Midnight
in Paris” successfully utilized historical characters
to add depths and understanding, Mr. Wang’s idea
didn’t expand on the book’s themes of deep
emotional themes of love, judgment, betrayal and atonement.
The results of successful integrating the two stories
devoid of the background research and historical perspectives
found within Lisa See’s book and not having intimate
perspective(s) of the lives ot today’s Shanghai
young women made the results disappointing. It did illustrate
Mr. Wang’s views that Chinese culture is not about
foot binding and macho males while escaping the specter
of criticism that was directed at his “Joy Luck
Club” film. After watching the film, audiences might
be wondering what is the actual story – especially
since the film ended with the images of Nina and Sophia?
GIANNA
JUN
She
was born in Seoul, South Korea on October 30, 1981.
Her movie debut came in 1999 with the film WHITE VALENTINE.
This was followed by a role in IL MARE in 2000 (w/the
American remake being Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock's
THE LAKE HOUSE). In 2001, Jun had her biggest breakthrough
with the romantic comedy MY SASSY GIRL. In 2004, she
starred in the film WINDSTRUCK, a South Korean, fantasy,
romantic comedy, which was directed by Kwak Jae-yong.
. In 2006, she was in the movie DAISY, directed by
Hong Kong’s multi-talented Andrew Lau. In 2009,
she made her English-language film debut when she
starred as Saya in BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE, which
was filmed in China and Argentina in March 2007. It
was during filming that she adopted the westernized
name Gianna Jun. Gianna Jun remains as one of the
most talked about actresses from Asia and is still
one of the most popular models for commercial ads.
THE
PICTURE OF CHINESE CINEMA consists of a
door that is wide open that depicts a bright future of its
entry into Hollywood's proverbial "Gold Mountain"
(jin shan, Gam Saan/Gum Shan) – Hollywood’s
entertainment industry. Who will be Chinese Cinema’s
new generation of directors/producers that carry-on the
tradition of the so-called “Fifth Generation”
(filmmakers from Beijing Film Academy that brought increased
popularity of Chinese cinema abroad that jettisoned jettisoned
traditional methods of storytelling and opted for a more
free and unorthodox approach) to go beyond the success of
wuxia martial-arts films (i.e. “Hero” and “Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), embrace Zhang Yimou’s
words to films that communicate “good stories that
people all over the world can understand and be touched
by" and/or heed Janet Yang’s advice to understand
the “fundamental differences in narrative” (i.e.
classic three-arc structure like the Greeks, as oppose to
oral traditions’ tendencies to long rambling stories
– Western narrative structure) that draws global audiences,
FOOT BINDING
For
ten centuries, Chinese women underwent an extraordinary
procedure designed to permanently transform the
human body: the practice of foot binding. It began
in the 10th Century and continued well into the
20th, when the practice was finally outlawed –
and it impacted the lives of millions of Chinese
girls and women.
Historical
records indicate that the roots of foot binding
go back to the Song Dynasty, when the Chinese ruler
Li Yu fell madly in love with a dancer who bound
her feet into the slender shape of a new moon and
danced on a lotus platform, which the arts-loving
emperor found intoxicatingly beautiful. Soon it
became the standard of beauty, with tiny, compacted
feet considered the height of elegance, refinement
and erotic allure. With women in the royal court
binding their feet, and those of their daughters,
the trend spread outwards into the populace. Foot
binding became a female status symbol, a source
of power and esteem, in a world where almost everything
else was denied to women.
By
the 19th Century, bound feet were found on nearly
every wealthy woman in China, and had become one
of the few ways young women from lower classes could
hope for upward mobility and marriage to a wealthier
man. The lengthy, agonizing binding process was
started in childhood, between the ages of 3 and
7, when soft, malleable toes and arches were broken,
then compressed daily with tight straps and bandages
that folded the toes underneath the sole, squeezing
and constricting the entire foot until it formed
the desired 3-inch shape. Despite the pain, girls
undergoing foot binding had to walk on their broken
feet daily to become used to the balance, which
led to an unusual, swaying walking style, known
as “The Lotus Gait.”
The
procedure, which was either performed by professional
foot-binders, by mothers or another female member
of the family, was excruciating for children. It
sometimes resulted in deadly infections or feet
that were almost non-functional, too painful to
walk on for long periods of time, which further
limited a woman’s freedom. Yet, at the same
time, bound feet could also be a path to greater
opportunity – holding out the promise of a
better life for their children.
Although controversy surrounded the practice for
centuries, foot binding was not formally banned
until 1912. Even then, women continued to bind their
feet in more remote areas for several more decades
until missionaries, early Chinese feminists and
the Communists who came to power in the 1940s began
anti foot binding campaigns. Ironically, the anti
foot binding movements of the mid 20th Century turned
women with bound feet into pariahs who were now
set apart by the very limbs that had once been the
height of beauty. In the 1990s, the last shops selling
the traditional 3-inch “lotus shoes”
for women with bound feet closed.
THE
2011 VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
saw Asian films taking three of the eight top prizes -
the Silver Lion for best director was awarded to Cai Shangjun
for “People Mountain People Sea” , Hong Kong
actress Deanie Ip won best actress for her role in director
Ann Hui’s drama “A Simple Life” and
special mentions in the Orizzonti section (awards that
focuses on new trends in world cinema) went to Charles
Lim Yi Yong’s “All The Lines Flow Out”
have provided tangible evidence of its fast-growing recognition.
Existing projects that are at the cusp of the Chinese
Cinema invasion include Mike Medavoy/Ren Zhouglun (Shanghai
Film Group’s President) co-producing a six hour
English language feature and related six-hour tv miniseries
on Jews in Shanghai, Lu Chuan’s City of Life and
Death, Zhang Yimou’s $100 million dollar project
- “The Flowers of War” (whose working title
was “Heroes of Nanking”) stars Christian Bale
in a story using the infamous Rape of Nanking as the backdrop
and Mike Medavoy/Jonathan Shen’s Shineworks (in
conjunction with Zhao Qizheng – chairman of the
foreign affairs committee of the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Converence) are developing multiple
projects. Films with an unique blend of European influence
could lend additional credenence such as the Marco and
Antonio Manetti (aka the Manetti Bros.) “L’arrivo
di Wang,” or “The Arrival of Wang,”
which is a modern-day morality tale for Western nations
troubled by — and distrustful of — China’s
growing economic power and influence in global political
matters that ask the question “How much should we
trust our neighbors?” and “What is a prejudice?”
MANY
NEW AND ADDITIONAL CHINESE CREATIVE VOICES
are being brought up within America’s creatively
environment freed to explore their imaginations and vision
while learning the narrative style that permeates successful
Hollywood films . From China - UCLA’s School of
Theater, Film and Television graduate applications were
up 59% from the previous year, USC’s School of Cinematic
Arts has 23 graduate students, School of Film/Video at
the California Institute of the Arts doubled their enrollment
(four to eight) and Northwestern University/Columbia University/Chapman
University/AFI have a steady growth of students. Well-financed
newcomers such as real estate magnate Jon Jiang’s
$100 million dollars “Empires of the Deep”
(3-D film mashup of “Avatar,” “Gladiator”
and “Pirates of the Caribbean”) that includes
ancient Greek warriors, pirates, underwater kingdoms,
villain called “Demon Mage,” mermaids that
kill men during sex and Olga Kurylenko - a sultry Bond
girl and American actors are providing other efforts to
bring Chinese Cinema to the world. With the encouragement
of various advocates such as Yang Lun (China’s version
of Oprah), intriguing stories of how the people of China
are being transformed and how they are transforming the
world will be told.
