Gotham Diary:
Double Feature
22 July 2011

I saw two movies today. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Friends With Benefits. What else was there to do in this heat? Because the two of them ate up the entire afternoon, I was left with no time to write either one up (what with shopping at Fairway for the third day in a row and having a pleasant dinner with Kathleen out on the balcony, despite the heat — but I want to reserve the space before I tuck in for the night. More tomorrow! Or eventually.

I will say that it’s great to see Mila Kunis in a role that’s almost big enough for her talent. But the face that I can’t get out of my mind — and I’m sure that everyone who sees Wayne Wang’s new film will feel something like the same impact — is that of Bingbing Li as Taitai Wei. Her performance, more of a cinematic emanation really, has left me with the first-impression false memory of having seen Olivia de Havilland play the newly-widowed Victoria. All the light has gone out of Ms Li’s character’s life, leaving the astonishing gravity of a black hole.