South Korean actress Jun Ji-hyun, famous for her role in My Sassy Girl and Windstruck teams up with Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi in the forthcoming film “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,” which was based on a novel by American-Chinese Lisa Lee.
Set in the 19th-century Southern Hunan province in China, the film revolves around the heartwarming story of female relationship between lifelong friends Lily (Jeon Ji-hoon) and Snow Flower (Zhang Ziyi).
In a time and place when Chinese girls had their feet bound and spent their lives in isolation, the Snow Flower and the Secret Fan offers another dimension unknown to many: a language kept a secret by a group of women for thousands of years.
Lily and Snow Flower will bring to the screen their secret code, nu shu (women’s writing), the only gender-based written language to have been discovered in the world. Amid rigid social conventions, secret letters were painted on fans and dreams and hopes were woven in handkerchiefs. But beyond language, these two would have friendship and love to sustain them throughout their lives.
The film is a co-production of Zhang Ziyi and Wendi Murdoch. It’s Ziyi’s second film as a producer after making her production debut with “Sophie’s Revenge,” an urban romantic comedy in which she played the lead character.
Sohu.com reports that anyone from Taiwan’s most popular boy band, F4, will make it into screen. As of this post, no official announcement has been made yet about the male lead.
The film will begin shooting mid-January in Shanghai under the direction of renowned Chinese American film director Wayne Wang who also directed “Maid in Manhattan.”
