From the get go it shouldn't be surprising what this movie is going to strive for: cheap sentimentality with the schmaltzy music.
Like every other movie that tries to do the same: it just ends up being off putting when characters do nothing but brood and cry at their hardships.
The plot makes no sense except to inject additional melodrama from modern day Shanghai to draw similarities in the lives of women from 200 years ago. I just gagged at the nonsensical "ghost" images of Snow Flower in contemporary Shanghai.
I don't think anyone can actually sit through this clunking piece of time waster in one setting, as the pacing is simply atrocious. It took me about half a dozen tries over several days to get to the marathon ending - which is ironic given the run time isn't that bad.
(And I speak as somebody who can sit through the entirety of Dr.Zhivago in one setting.) In short, this is the worst kind of manipulative charlatan product tie-in that Wayne Wang has tried in awhile. I simply don't understand how he keeps making these brooding glacial book-movies; and why does the Asian-American blogs keep posting about these intellectually vapid books and movies?
Like every other movie that tries to do the same: it just ends up being off putting when characters do nothing but brood and cry at their hardships.
The plot makes no sense except to inject additional melodrama from modern day Shanghai to draw similarities in the lives of women from 200 years ago. I just gagged at the nonsensical "ghost" images of Snow Flower in contemporary Shanghai.
I don't think anyone can actually sit through this clunking piece of time waster in one setting, as the pacing is simply atrocious. It took me about half a dozen tries over several days to get to the marathon ending - which is ironic given the run time isn't that bad.
(And I speak as somebody who can sit through the entirety of Dr.Zhivago in one setting.) In short, this is the worst kind of manipulative charlatan product tie-in that Wayne Wang has tried in awhile. I simply don't understand how he keeps making these brooding glacial book-movies; and why does the Asian-American blogs keep posting about these intellectually vapid books and movies?