Despite its alleged "political correctness", Hollywood continues to employ ethnic stereotypes in its films. Asians happened to be the most visible victims of such policy; whenever an Asian character appear in Hollywood film, it is usually in the form of nerdy geek. Asian women fare even worse in Hollywood, and the films where Asian women happen to be protagonists are quite rare. In 1993 there were two films that did something about that injustice, both produced by Oliver Stone - his epic Heaven & Earth and The Joy Luck Club, drama directed by Wayne Wang.
The plot of the film, based on the best-selling novel by Amy Tan, begins in San Francisco. Four elderly Chinese women gather every week to play mah-jongg and tell their stories. When Sujuan Wu (played by Kieu Chinh), one member of the group, dies, her American-born daughter June (played by Ming-Na Wen) takes her place. There she listens the stories about four women, their troubled past in pre-WW2 China together with stories about their American- born children. One of those stories is about terrible thing Sujuan has done in the old country and her desperate attempts to redeem for such act.
Adapting good literature into good films is a task often beyond capabilities of even the most experienced of all film makers. Wayne Wang, the director who would later shine with Smoke, managed to create very good film worthy of the reputation of its literary source. Apart from his storytelling talents, Wang was in doing so aided by Amy Tan and Ronald Bass - screenwriters who had kept the novel's structure in the film. The plot is actually series of small and seemingly meaningless vignettes that gradually become part of the whole and leave strong emotional impact in the end. In each of the stories Wang is fortunate to have great acting talents at his disposal - they are too numerous to be individually praised (and only a section of them have recognisable names, which only shows how limited choice of roles for Asian women is in modern Hollywood). Rachel Portman provides good musical score, while cinematographer Amir M. Mokri, together with Chinese locations, provides The Joy Luck Club with memorable images.
However, The Joy Luck Club has its share of problems. In its drive to address the long ignored Asian women issues it goes to the other extremes and often uses somewhat stereotypical portrayal of men as idiots or savage brutes. Because of that, The Joy Luck Club represents all the best and all the worst of modern Hollywood's "women's films", but because of Wang's great skill and talent behind good things in this film outweigh the bad.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on June 5th 2003)
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