It is a performances centric movie

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There really never is a happy moment in the film. It is sad and dramatic (maybe over-dramatic at times, especially in modern day). Slow moving with mediocre acting and dialogue in present day. I wanted to see this because Hugh Jackman stars in it, but he only appears for a few minutes...

Watched this movie on home CD. Would loved to have seen it on the big screen.This was a beautiful movie, but since most was spoken Chinese and for some odd reason the copy we watched from home had no sub-titles during the majority of the spoken word, which was Chinese, we had to guess at what was going on.The movie is clear enough to figure things out and some English is spoken, but I would loved to have known what was being said during the Chinese spoken portions.Overall, a lovely story of how close friendships are important. It also showed how people will find a way to connect, even when forbidden to do so.I was also interesting to see how Chinese culture represses women.

I finished reading all the previous reviews to have a clear idea about what other people saw in this movie, and I must say that all that emphasis about the film being too different from the book doesn't show a great understanding of the cinematic technique. A movie is not a book. The visual, with long shots and close ups, the dialogue and the music, even the noises, take over all the written pages to express a single gesture, the full description of a landscape, or the design of a dress. A single close up can give us the essence of a full chapter.This movie is sheer poetry. Forget about the original book that helped to create this jewel of a movie, just watch this film, allow your senses to be absorbed by the two parallel stories --the contemporary and the historical-- and just absorb all that beauty offered to you in the story-line, the exquisite photography, the delicacy of sentiments expressed by these women (it is a terrible film for men's egos, because we come a very poor second compared with those women, overpowered by men's brutality and yet transcending the horrible handicaps imposed on them, like the tiding of their feet from early age, to convert them into defenseless crippled creatures, totally depending on men, and their virtual slaves for life).The image of those bounded stomps, deformed to the point of becoming unrecognizable as human feet symbolizes too the humiliation some ultraconservative elements of society try to impose over minorities as if to say: "There, you'll go thru life bounded and suffering, freedom to be yourself will be denied to you because I want it so". The total love among these "Sisters for life" was infinitely superior to the love these women could have had for their husbands. We see that in both cases --the historic and the contemporary-- and in both cases it lasted, strong, to the last consequences.Contrary to other viewers, I didn't have the slightest problem in following the development of the two parallel stories, since it was done in a very natural, simple and honest way; both stories superbly intertwined to perfection till the final resolution. ¿A masterpiece? yes, I think so.

The current scandal surrounding Rupert Murdoch makes it all the more surprising that his wife produced Wayne Wang's "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan". But even so, it's still worth seeing. It tells the story of two friends in present-day Shanghai, and the connection that they have with two girls in 19th century China through a fan on which they wrote secret messages.Wang famously focused on Chinese-American families in "The Joy Luck Club", and took a bittersweet look at people's lives in "Smoke". This movie doesn't equal either of those, but I still recommend it. The development of Shanghai certainly reflects the changes in the lives of the girls (and the changes that China has undergone over the past 100 years). Not great, but worth seeing.