Impressing a pretentious story of metaphorical ancestral connection upon an equally rote story of deathbed regret, director Wayne Wang‘s adaptation of Lisa See’s 2005 bestselling novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan rather gracelessly straddles two time periods. Weighed down by a leaden and ineffective script, the end result is a turgid, generations-spanning melodrama that deifies and fetishizes the idea of feminine companionship’s intense depths without substantively delivering a fully rendered portrait of it. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Fox Searchlight, PG-13, 102 minutes)