Let’s waste no time and get right to it: One of this film’s two producers is the woman, Wendi Deng Murdoch, who is now famous for leaping at and hitting a man, Jonnie Marbles, who threw a plate of shaving foam at her husband, Rupert Murdoch, during a parliamentary hearing. The question that must now be on everyone’s mind is, of course: What kind of movie did this “tiger wife” produce? To begin with, not a very good one. Directed by Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing), Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is based on a popular novel of the same name by Lisa See. The novel, however, is set entirely in 19th-century China, whereas the movie is set in three Chinas: 21st-century China, late-20th-century China, and mid-19th-century China.

One of the two main characters in 21st-century China, Sophia (Gianna Jun), is the author of an unpublished novel that’s set in 19th-century China and concerns two friends who become laotong (“old same”), two women whose friendship is cemented by their commonalities. In short, the actual novel becomes a fiction within a fiction. But what happens in Sophia’s novel is not very different from what happens to her and her close friend, Nina (Li Bingbing). The two girls become laotong, but the forces of the world—political turmoil, economic turbulence, the demands of family life—challenge and finally break their sacred and deep bond. The novel has a sad ending. The film has a happy one.

But where is Wendi Murdoch in all of this? The novelist in the film, Sophia, happens to fall in the love with an Australian nightclub owner, Arthur (Hugh Jackman). This does not happen in the novel. There are no Australian entrepreneurs in the novel. Wendi Murdoch did not produce the novel.

This article has been updated since its original publication.