Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Fox Searchlight Pictures | Release Date: July 15, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
42
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
20
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
70
The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttJul 13, 2011
So strong are the emotions - and, yes, the melodrama - that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan represents one of Wang's best films to date. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnJul 18, 2011
While indisputably beautiful and affecting in parts, "Snow Flower" is dominated by tame dramatic ingredients that never fully gel. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie OgleAug 4, 2011
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan moves slowly, languidly; its art direction is often lovely, and despite their truncated screen time Lily and Snow Flower do make you care about their fates. But you would have cared more without all the distraction. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie RickeyJul 21, 2011
The connection between the two time frames and stories (the contemporary one with the addition of screenwriters) is flimsy as a frayed rope bridge, forced as the stepsister's foot into Cinderella's glass slipper. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazinePam GradyJul 16, 2011
This elegant weepie offers plenty for fans of melodrama, character-driven stories and period pieces. Read full review
58
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallAug 3, 2011
Wang's high regard for women is intact, plus a keen eye for period detail making the 19th century sequences lovely to observe. But it's nothing we haven't seen before. Read full review
55
MovielineStephanie ZacharekJul 14, 2011
To invoke Pauline Kael's review of Diane Kurys's "Entre Nous," it's about two women not having a lesbian affair. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyAug 9, 2011
With Snow Flower, the filmmaker is forever torn between two childhoods, two adulthoods, two distinct political and social eras, and two complex relationships, unable to make both equally relevant. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsJul 28, 2011
Once we've quickly digested the fortune-cookie message that modern women are as bound by obligations as their grandmothers were, all we can savor is the scenery. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJul 21, 2011
It's hard to tell whether this is a tribute to female solidarity or a lamentation. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJul 21, 2011
The gentle erotic undertow in the friendship of Snow Flower and Lily has been toned down, and replaced by … niceness. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderAndrea GronvallJul 20, 2011
In this lavish adaptation of Lisa See's novel, the complex chronologies of the parallel narratives are skillfully handled by director Wayne Wang, which makes his reliance on unbridled sentimentality all the more irritating. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJul 20, 2011
Soppy and sentimental, it evokes "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" without improving on it. Read full review
50
New York PostV.A. MusettoJul 15, 2011
Hugh Jackman appears briefly as Sophia's Aussie boyfriend, and gets to perform a lively song-and-dance number. But for some strange reason, his name isn't in the credits. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigJul 14, 2011
The lesson of the lovely-looking, but disappointing, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is avoid tinkering too much with a novelist's work. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisJul 14, 2011
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. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJul 14, 2011
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. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubAlison WillmoreJul 14, 2011
This latest film aims for "The Joy Luck Club's" crossover appeal but ends up stilted and emotionally remote. Read full review
50
Village VoiceKarina LongworthJul 12, 2011
As the parallel friendships evolve over time, both push and pull between platonic and erotic; it's to the film's credit that it never definitively suggests that love can only be one or the other. Read full review
42
Portland OregonianMarc MohanJul 28, 2011
Jumping repeatedly and randomly from present-day Shanghai to 1997 to 1829 and periods in between, the film has a pace that seems almost willfully tedious. Read full review
40
Arizona RepublicRandy CordovaJul 23, 2011
Wayne Wang directed "The Joy Luck Club," a fine, sentimental look at Chinese women. Now he presents another look at Chinese sisterhood in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, and it feels like a shallow imitation: Imagine getting Kate Hudson when you expect Goldie Hawn. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJul 15, 2011
Unfortunately, its present-day tale, involving a career woman seeking to mend her 20-year bond with a girlfriend injured in an accident, is lax and clunky, and its story-within-a-story - a tale of two laotong, or soul sisters, in oppressive mid-1800s China - is gorgeous but simplistic. Read full review
40
VarietyJustin ChangJul 13, 2011
Mawkish, clunky and unenlightening about female suffering in this or any generation. Read full review
40
Time OutDavid FearJul 12, 2011
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. Read full review
38
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottAug 19, 2011
Rather than a moving story of sisterly love, we get little more than a grandly appointed disappointment. Read full review
38
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreJul 27, 2011
Despite the locations and the informative narrative, almost every scene is missing that spark that would bring the characters to life and immediacy to the story. Read full review
38
Washington PostStephanie MerryJul 21, 2011
The books-trump-movies camp knows where this is headed: The film version - contains two characters and one narrative too many. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoJul 14, 2011
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. Read full review
33
Entertainment WeeklyKeith StaskiewiczJul 16, 2011
Sadly, rather than melding the best of two worlds, the film only takes the worst of their soap operas. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJul 28, 2011
The film squanders any potential it had to be a revealing look into female intimacy and instead uses broad-scale melodramatic strokes. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJul 14, 2011
This latest from director Wayne Wang, about the friendship of two young women, travels from 2011 to 1997 to 1829 to 1838, in search of a reason for the audience to keep watching and start caring. That reason is never found. Read full review
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