The story is classic in San Francisco of Asian women with own daughters. This Is Us show had nailed the past or chronological times same as Joy Luck Club's chronologies times.

I read Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club in high school and on my leisure time, and became one of my favorites. It is a combination of fantastic stories about four young Chinese women learning the walks of life from their mothers, whose life stories of love, hate, sacrifices, honor and war are retold in the novel and powerfully depicted in this movie, which are acted out through a series of flashbacks from the daughters' present day lives to their mothers' past in feudal China.Ming-Na Wen, Tamlyn Tomita, Lauren Tom and Rosalind Chao play the four daughters and each gave a powerful and realistic performance in their respective roles. The same goes with their on-screen mothers, played wonderfully by Kieu Chinh, Tsai Chin, France Nuyen and Lisa Lu. Their mother-daughter and friend-friend chemistry together were inspiring and a joy to watch and experience.This movie made me appreciate my Chinese heritage as it delves upon another's struggles and perseverance through the culture's past, present and future, and explore how one can cement his/her relationship with one's child or parent and learn from each other to better their lives. The scene where Kieu Chieh's character Suyuan flees China from the Japanese occupation, pushing a cart with her newborn twin daughters and a handful of her belongings in it was such a strong scene that it put tears to my eyes. The cart collapsing with her daughters and belongings spilling out furthered the emotion. Then, the following part where Suyuan had to make the difficult decision to leave her daughters behind, knowing she couldn't care for them, and putting some jewelry and a black & white picture of herself with the baby bundle finally sent me crying my eyes out (I have never had this much years in any of the movies I've seen).Kudos to Amy Tan for writing such a powerful novel and kudos to Director Wayne Wang for directing such a beautiful movie and cast. I enjoyed every minute of it and I highly recommend it to anyone.Grade A

Against the backdrop of a raucous yet emotional "going away" party for a Chinese-American woman named June-Mei Woo (Ming-Na Wen), the wonderful and bittersweet stories of 8 women, 4 Chinese-born and 4 American born, are spun in splendor.June is preparing to depart from her home in San Francisco to China to meet 2 older sisters she has never seen before. The twin sisters, in fact, were thought to have been dead for decades, as their mother, Suyuan Woo (Kieu Chinh) was forced to leave them, as infants, by a roadside because she was too sick and weak to carry them and had no automobile or other transport. For years, Suyuan wondered what became of these babies she unwillingly gave up, and it haunted her up until the end of her life. Only now, four months after her death, have the 2 women been located, and June, both with joy and trepidation, is going to meet them and tell them about their mother.Up until today's party, June believed that she really didn't know or understand her late mother. She bristled as a child at her mother's insistence that she learn to play piano and compete in talent shows at school. June believed that Suyuan was disappointed in her daughter's life, her career path, her choices, and felt inferior to the daughter of Suyuan's best friend Lindo Jong (Tsai Chin).But Lindo's daughter Waverly Jong (Tamlyn Tomita), as uppity as she could be towards June both before and after adulthood, did not have the easiest time with her mother either. A chess prodigy at age 7, Waverly felt constantly pressured and painfully embarrassed by Lindo's constant bragging about her daughter's extraordinary talents. The generation gap and cultural differences cause more than a few verbal spats between them, and Lindo feels as though Waverly is ashamed of her for being "Chinese". Lindo's own history with her mother comes into the equation. At age 4, Lindo is betrothed, and at 14, forced to marry a 10 year old who, naturally, is not sexually mature enough to be a husband. Lindo is the one who is blamed by her surly old mother-in-law of course. It is not until young Lindo cleverly schemes her way out of the ridiculous marriage that she finds happiness, though it is not known if she ever saw her mother again.Intertwined into this happy gathering celebrating June's journey to China are the stories of 2 more women, Ying-Ying and her daughter Lena St. Clair. At 16, Ying-Ying (France Nuyen) falls madly in love with the local ladykiller Lin Xiao (a dubbed Russell Wong), only to find out shortly that he is an abusive, hateful cad who brings women into their home at all hours. Ying-Ying's heart is broken, but when she accidentally drowns their infant boy, it is shattered, and for a few years, she lives in a state of mental catatonia. After her mother's recovery later on, Lena, the daughter (Lauren Tom) finds herself in a rather odd marriage to an accountant (Michael Paul Chan), based more on mathematical equality than love and affection. Ying-Ying, knowing her daughter is heading for a life of misery and lovelessness, intervenes.The other friend of Suyuan is An-Mei Hsu (Lisa Lu), and her daughter Rose (Rosalind Chao). Rose's once happy marriage to Ted Jordan (Andrew McCarthy) is ending, and An-Mei sees a disturbing pattern of behavior in her daughter that reminds her of her own mother (Vivian Wu). If a person feels they are of little value compared to someone else, it is easy to take advantage of them and abuse their goodness. An-Mei recalls her mother's terrible life sixty years earlier, first widowed by An-Mei's father and then the victim of one of the most evil conspiracies I've ever seen in film, and finally (and most horribly), disowned by her own parents. And An-Mei desperately explains to Rose that she must stand up and be counted instead of letting people walk all over her. The outcome of this story is on the upbeat, thankfully, otherwise I would have said it was the most bittersweet of all the stories.But it's not. The most haunting story in the film is that of the late Suyuan. War has broken out and she hastily gathers her most important belongings and her precious twin daughters. Without a car, she is forced to carry them in a wheelbarrel for miles and miles. She is weak and feverish, and eventually, the wheels of the wheelbarrel break and she tries in vain to carry the babies in her arms. Her strength gone, she leaves her little girls on the side of a rural road, praying that her note of instructions will be read and that she will see her children again.But she does not. Suyuan dies not knowing if her 2 girls lived beyond their infancy. There are few situations in movies that I've found sadder than this one, but Suyuan's daughter June, taking the place of her mother, goes to China and fulfills her late mother's cherished dream come true.The emotions of this film are almost too rich at times, especially with regards to Ying-Ying's, An-Mei and her mother's, Rose's, and above all, Suyuan's life stories. There will always be those who think of this film as "too corny" or "just another chick flick". Me, I don't mind OD'ing on emotion. If you're like me, you'll love this film for years to come.

The Joy Luck Club shows writers the commercial and critical success that is possible by using the structures and techniques of advanced screen writing. I have long argued that the old 3-act structure is too elementary for anyone wanting to write a mainstream Hollywood script that will actually sell. Trying to write an advanced film like The Joy Luck Club with it would be laughable.Here is a film that tells the story of eight women over the course of approximately sixty years. Does this film have three acts with plot twists on page 27 and page 87? Of course not. You could try to impose such a system - and I'm sure someone will - but what good would it do? The 3-act structure was never designed to help writers create a script. Its main use has been in demarcating a script after it's written.To see how this film is put together - and how you might write a film like it - we have to look at how the seven steps of every story interact with advanced structures.Every good story is founded on seven dramatic steps: problem/need, desire, opponent, plan, battle, self-revelation, and new equilibrium. Sure enough, the first thing we notice when exploring the structure of The Joy Luck Club is that each of the eight stories works through the seven steps.Clearly some of the stories in the film fulfill the seven steps better than others. In general I found the mothers' stories more compelling than the daughters'. That may be due in part to the nature of history and geography. The mothers' stories take place in a brutally patriarchal China that is going through vast social and political upheaval. As a result, the mothers' stories have an epic canvas, and the problems these women face are more tragic and profound.The daughters, on the other hand, face the problems of the affluent American, of what has also been called the "end of history." Without the burden of war, famine, and slavery, these "modern" women are free to concentrate on the psychological, on the painful bond between parent and child, or in these cases, mother and daughter.Indeed, the biggest flaw of the film for me is that the psychological needs and self-revelations of the daughters are virtually identical. Each woman feels inadequate in the face of her mother's expectations of her. And each learns, through the help of her mother, that she is a valuable and unique individual. I don't mean to diminish the importance of this problem or revelation. On the contrary, I was overjoyed to see such a powerful feminine perspective coming from a film industry that is so excessively masculine. But the sameness of the daughters' problems makes these parts of the film drag.To see the power of this film, we must go beyond a simple seven step breakdown of each of the eight stories. The trick to this film is the way these stories are tied together. And for this, we need to look at advanced structures.Unlike the linear seven or twenty-two step structure used by almost all Hollywood films to track a single main character, advanced films require specialized structures that can tie a number of characters and stories together into an organic whole. This is a complex subject; there are over 15 different advanced structures (see the Advanced Screen writing Class), and each serves a different thematic purpose.The Joy Luck Club uses a variation of the branching structure. In branching structures, the author sets up a main trunk, then takes the story out to a series of branches that can be organized in an infinite number of ways. The problem with branching structures is: how do you sequence the branches to avoid repetition and the sense that the story is stopping and starting all the time.The Joy Luck Club strategy is to center the story within a communal event where we can meet all the characters and return after each story to get anchored. The main trunk of the story is provided by the desire line of June. She wants to visit her long-lost sisters in China. This single line creates the reason for the communal event, returns again and again throughout the story, and gives the story the ending that not only completes June's story but thematically completes the stories of the other seven characters as well.To finish reading this review and to find others, please visit http://www.truby.com/im_jlc.html