Screenwriter Bass and novelist Tan have skilfully adapted her best-seller into a slick, complicated, overlong, saga about different generations of Asian women in the States.
Four Chinese women meet each week at the Joy Luck (mah-jong) Club in San Francisco. Their four daughters are well assimilated into US society and match the natives in their
concern with trivial everyday problems. In stark contrast, the lives of the elderly women are intercut as they discuss and recall early hardships. Wang manages to control the
numerous strands, handle the talented cast and raise this weepie several notches above soap.
