The Joy Luck Club (film)

1993 American film by Wayne Wang

The Joy Luck Club is a 1993 American drama film about the relationships between Chinese American women and their Chinese immigrant mothers. It was directed by Wayne Wang and stars Tsai Chin, Kieu Chinh, Lisa Lu, France Nuyen, Rosalind Chao, Lauren Tom, Tamlyn Tomita, and Ming Na Wen. The film is based on the 1989 novel of the same name by Amy Tan, who co wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bass. The film was produced by Bass, Tan, Wang, and Patrick Markey, while Oliver Stone served as an executive producer. Four older women, all Chinese immigrants living in San Francisco, meet regularly to play mahjong, eat, and tell stories. Each of these women has an adult Chinese American daughter. The film reveals the hidden pasts of the older women and their daughters, and how their lives are shaped by the clash of Chinese and American cultures as they strive to understand their family bonds and one another. Development of the project began when Wang approached Tan in 1989 at the time of the novel's release. Concerned about the novel's complex storytelling and character development, they teamed up with Bass in January 1990, who added a farewell party not in the original novel and voice overs to compress the film's storytelling without changing the main plot. Carolco Pictures initially supported the project until 1990, when the filmmakers turned down the contract for not receiving the creative control that they demanded. After the first draft was written between August and November 1991, the filmmakers shifted to Hollywood Pictures in spring 1992. Principal photography took place in San Francisco, the novel and the film's main setting, in October 1992 and then in China in February 1993. Filming ended in March 1993. The film was privately screened in sneak previews in spring 1993 and film festivals in August and September 1993. It premiered in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco on September 8, 1993. With the film's $10.5 million budget, it was moderately successful in the box office, earning $32.9 million in the United States. It received positive critical reaction, but also criticism for its negative portrayal of Asian American and Asian male characters. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

The Joy Luck Club was formed by four women in San Francisco: Lindo Jong, Ying Ying St. Clair, An Mei Hsu, and Suyuan Woo. The members have mainly played mahjong and told each other stories over the years. They emigrated from China, their native country, remarried, and gave birth to children in America. Suyuan's daughter, June, replaced her when Suyuan died four months before the time the film is set. The mothers have high hopes for their daughters' successes, but the daughters struggle through "anxieties, feelings of inadequacy, and failures." Throughout the film, the mothers and daughters bond by learning to understand each other and by overcoming their conflicts. The film's present day setting is June's farewell surprise party in San Francisco for her upcoming reunion with her long lost twin sisters in China. Among the guests are members of the Joy Luck Club, their daughters, other relatives, and friends. The characters below narrate their journeys to the audience while they reflect upon their pasts.

In China, four year old Lindo is betrothed to Tyan Yu, the son of the wealthy Huang family, and later moves into the Huang household at age fifteen. She spends the next four years in a childless and loveless marriage, earning the ire of her mother in law for failing to bear a son. Lindo overhears a servant girl telling her lover that she is pregnant, prompting him to abandon her. Plotting to leave the marriage without dishonoring herself, her family, and her in laws, Lindo pretends to have a nightmare in which Tyan Yu's ancestor expresses his displeasure at the marriage. She also claims that the ancestor has impregnated the servant girl with Tyan Yu's child, and that the matchmaker who arranged the marriage intentionally and wrongly paired Lindo and Tyan Yu for money. Furious, Mrs. Huang orders the matchmakers out of the Huangs' lives, allows the servant girl to marry Tyan Yu, and eventually gets the grandson she has desired. Lindo finally leaves the house and then moves to Shanghai. Years later, in America, Lindo has a new husband, a son, and a daughter named Waverly. At six years old, Waverly develops an interest in chess and becomes a chess champion. Annoyed by Lindo's constant boasting about Waverly's accomplishments, Waverly decides to quit chess. When she tries to play it again, Waverly finds that she has lost her confidence, prompting her to retire. Waverly, now an adult, has a daughter from her Chinese ex husband and is engaged to a white man, Rich, much to Lindo's chagrin. Waverly brings Rich to a family dinner in the hopes that Lindo will like him, but he improperly uses chopsticks and inadvertently insults Lindo's cooking, humiliating Waverly. Some time later, Lindo and Waverly go to a hair salon to get their hair done for Waverly's upcoming wedding. When Waverly directs the stylist on how to style Lindo's hair, Lindo is offended that her daughter would be embarrassed by her and becomes reluctant to attend the wedding. Lindo then tells her about one of her moments with her own mother. When Waverly asks whether Lindo likes Rich, Lindo admits that she likes Rich very much and gives Waverly and Rich her blessings, leading Waverly and her to reconcile. Back at June's farewell party, Rich almost successfully uses chopsticks (but accidentally drops a piece) and impresses Lindo by trying to respect Chinese table manners.

In China, Ying Ying St. Clair is married to Lin Xiao, who turns out to be abusive and unfaithful. Overwhelmed by her depression, Ying Ying begins to dissociate and drowns their baby son in the bathtub, which haunts her afterward. Years later, she has immigrated to America and suffers from bouts of depression from the trauma, as well as worrying that her daughter Lena will also suffer. After Ying Ying finally resolves her years of trauma, Lena shows Ying Ying around the new apartment she shares with her husband Harold, who is also Lena's boss. Ying Ying learns that Lena is uncomfortable with her financial arrangements with Harold. They split the costs of their life evenly with a list of things that they share, but Harold dominates the arrangements and ignores most of Lena's needs. Seeing that Lena is unhappy with her marriage, Ying Ying reasserts herself by knocking over a table in the bedroom and causing a vase to fall from the table and break. Hearing the sudden noise, Lena goes to her mother and admits her unhappiness. Ying Ying tells Lena she should leave and not come back until Harold gives her what she wants. Shifting to June's farewell party, Lena is seen in a fulfilling relationship with her new fiancé who is accepting of Ying Ying, as she is of him.

Nine year old An Mei Hsu has been raised by her relatives and grandmother. She is reunited with her long lost mother, who was disowned by her family for becoming the Fourth Wife of a wealthy middle aged man named Wu Tsing shortly after her husband's death, and has returned to the household to care for her dying mother. To not be separated from her again, An Mei moves out with her mother to Wu Tsing's house against her relatives' wishes. Years later, in America, An Mei's daughter, Rose, meets her future husband, Ted Jordan, in college. Ted is initially attracted to Rose's assertive, forthright nature. She agrees to marry him when he confronts his snobbish mother for making racist comments towards her. Over the course of their marriage, Rose and Ted grow apart, mainly because Rose, desperate to fit in with Ted's associates, becomes submissive and demure at the cost of her own identity and interests. To complicate matters more, Rose suspects that Ted has cheated on her with another woman, which he asserts is not the main reason for their problems. Some time later, An Mei comes for a visit and relays the story of her own mother's fate to Rose. When An Mei arrives at Wu Tsing's house, the Second Wife gives An Mei a pearl necklace as a gift. Dismayed that her daughter has been so easily won over, An Mei's mother breaks the necklace, revealing it to be made of glass. Later, An Mei learns the truth about how her mother became a Fourth Wife: While her mother was at the temple mourning the death of her husband, the Second Wife met and befriended her, enticing her to meet Wu Tsing, who raped and impregnated her. The mother's relatives refused to believe she had been raped and kicked her out of the house. With nowhere else to go, the mother reluctantly agreed to become Wu Tsing's Fourth Wife. After her mother gave birth to a boy, An Mei's half brother, the Second Wife claimed him as her own. After telling An Mei the truth about her situation, the mother commits suicide by eating "sticky sweet dumplings" laced with opium, choosing the day of her death carefully to threaten Wu Tsing with the vengeance of her angry ghost. Afraid of this curse, Wu Tsing vows to honor An Mei's mother as an honorable First Wife and promises to raise An Mei and her half brother accordingly. When the Second Wife tries to pay respects to An Mei's late mother, An Mei screams at the Second Wife, and destroys her necklace. According to An Mei's narration, the Second Wife's hair starts turning white after that day off screen. In the present day, An Mei encourages Rose to stand up to Ted for herself and their daughter Jennifer, or nothing will change. To avoid the fate of An Mei's mother, Rose reclaims her strength and confronts Ted, telling him that he will leave the house and that he will not take their daughter away from her. Rose then tells him that she was wrong to consider her love for him as less worthy than his love for her, compelling Ted to take her seriously and stop taking her for granted. At June's farewell party, Rose and Ted are seen together briefly kissing and sharing a slice of cake.

During the Japanese invasion of China in World War II, Suyuan Woo escapes with her twin baby daughters, but becomes ill and her cart breaks down during the journey. Near death, Suyuan is unable to carry the babies herself and abandons them, along with all of her other possessions, including a photo of herself. Suyuan survives, but is haunted by guilt over the loss of her daughters and not knowing their fates. After remarrying in America, Suyuan has high hopes for her new daughter, June, who feels that she can never be more than who she is, so fails to live up to her mother's expectations. Suyuan insists that June learn piano in the hopes that she will turn out to be a prodigy, but she quits after performing poorly in a recital. The story moves ahead to one year before Suyuan's passing. June, now an adult, has been freelancing for her rival, Waverly. At a dinner party, Waverly rejects June's business proposals, prompting Suyuan to comment on the differences between June and Waverly, saying that style is something one cannot be taught, but must be born with. June feels humiliated at the implication that Waverly has style, and she does not, believing that her mother has betrayed her, being a failure in her mother's eyes. The following day, June berates Suyuan for her remarks and admits she could never live up to her high expectations. June laments that Suyuan has always been disappointed in June because of her disappointing academic grades, her lack of a serious relationship, and her less than successful job. Suyuan gives her a necklace that she has worn since June's birth, telling June that it will guide June's heart as it has done hers. Suyuan also assures June that she is the one who has the unteachable style, admitting that while Waverly has been the better of the two in competitions, June always has had the best heart, which is the reason Suyuan is so proud to have June as her daughter. On Easter, before her farewell party, June receives the news from the club that her long lost twin sisters are alive. When June cannot understand the twins' letter written in Chinese, Lindo purposely mistranslates the letter, claiming that the twins are aware of Suyuan's death and the existence of their half sister June. Back in the present, when the farewell party ends, Lindo confesses that she wrote letters to the twins and then signed Suyuan's name. June begs Lindo to tell them the truth, but Lindo tells her that it is too late, because the twin sisters are anticipating their mother, still believing that Suyuan is alive, and that June must be the one to inform them of their mother's death. When she arrives in China to meet her sisters, June tells them the truth about Suyuan and herself. The sisters finally embrace.

Amy Tan and Academy Award winner Ronald Bass wrote the film adaptation. Wayne Wang, who made prior films about Chinese Americans, such as his first film, Chan Is Missing, was the director. Filming began in San Francisco in October 1992 Therefore, the film is dedicated in her memory in the end credits.

Reviews of The Joy Luck Club were generally positive. The film holds an 86% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 83 reviews, including 71 "fresh" ones. The site's consensus states: "The Joy Luck Club traces the generational divide, unearthing universal truths while exploring lives through the lens of a specific cultural experience." CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film an "A+" grade. Critic Gene Siskel, singled out the script and performances, praising the film for presenting images of Asian Americans outside the narrow range of childhood violinists and spelling bee winners, opining that its main accomplishments were its depiction of how the brutality of the lives of women in China could continue to influence the lives of their American daughters, and its ability to allow audiences to relate to a large group of Chinese Americans as individuals. Siskel picked it as the seventh of the top ten movies of 1993, while Roger Ebert picked it as the fifth of his own top 10 movies of 1993. It was voted one of the favorite films of 1993 among 1,297 readers of The Arizona Daily Star, ranked number 14 out of 253. However, when the film premiered in the United Kingdom, "some British critics found it more schmaltzy than sour sweet." David Denby from The New Yorker called the film "a superb achievement" and praised the director's "impressive visual skills". However, Denby criticized the film writing, "[I]ts tone is relentlessly earnest, its meanings limited or wanly inspirational, and my emotions, rather than well[ed] up, remained small." Moreover, he deemed men in the film as "caricatures" and the mothers' attempts to "teach [their daughters] the lesson of self worth" as inadequate and pretentious. Film critic Emanuel Levy graded the film a B+, calling it an "emotionally heart rending study of generational gap–but also continuity–between Chinese mothers and their Chinese American daughters" and a visually well done propaganda for "cultural diversity". However, he also found it too long with "too many stories and [ ] flashbacks" and too mainstream and broad to be an art film, especially when it was screened in "prestigious film festivals." Matt Hinrichs from DVD Talk rated the film four and a half stars out of five, commenting, "Despite the cultural and gender specific nature of the story, [ ] there are a lot of overriding themes explored here (such as the daughters fearing that they're repeating their moms' mistakes) that have a universal scope and appeal." Harvard Crimson writer, Allen Soong, reflected that "while the women in this film are fully fleshed out characters who are a remarkable improvement over the "exotic Oriental" Cassandra from Wayne's World, the male characters are merely additions to the long list of negative images of Asian men in our culture." He added that "the Asian men in The Joy Luck Club, are either domineering and misogynist in the worst imaginable way, or they're just clueless and aloof."

The soundtrack was released by Hollywood Records on September 28, 1993. It was composed and produced by Rachel Portman, co orchestrated by Portman and John Neufeld, conducted by J. A. C. Redford. The Joy Luck Club (1993) was the second, a third of a century later. The third was released a quarter century later in 2018, Crazy Rich Asians. In the 1990s, after the success of the film, Disney Studios contacted Amy Tan to discuss making her second novel, The Kitchen God's Wife, into a film, a spiritual successor/sequel to the first; however, negotiations fell through. In the waning of the glow of The Joy Luck Club, further Asian American stories were mostly shot down by studios after the brief rush following the film. In 2018, Ronald Bass, the producer of the film, revealed that a sequel is in the works, waiting to be picked up by a studio or a network. Both a TV series pilot script and a sequel feature film script have been made. The intention is to reunite the original cast for the sequel, making the film's mothers into grandmothers and daughters into mothers, with Millennial children, in a three generation story, following the developments of the families since the original film. The setting would be 25 years after the setting of the film. In 2022, it was announced that the sequel was now in the works, and would be produced by Hyde Park Entertainment Group and producer Jeff Kleeman. In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".