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The eight stars of Hollywood Pictures' "The Joy Luck Club" are gathered in a hotel suite near the Los Angeles airport. Three of the actresses who play the film's Chinese-American daughters, Ming-Na Wen, Rosalind Chao and Lauren Tom, are madly drying each other's hair in the bathroom, giggling self-consciously as a photographer tries to capture their images in the mirror.
In the main room, Tamlyn Tomita, "Joy Luck's" fourth daughter, is wandering around in a slinky black gown, barefoot, asking "Have you seen my shoes?" Tsai Chin, who plays Tomita's mother in the movie, unearths a pair of platform sandals from beneath the cushions of her chair, calling out, "Here's a pair," in an amused voice.
France Nuyen, Lisa Lu and Kieu Chinh, the actresses who portray the mothers of the other girls, sit together on the sofa, sipping tea and chatting like long-lost friends while makeup artists hover over them with brushes and powder.
"You see, this is how it was when we were filming," Kieu Chinh confides, amid the hubbub.
Tsai Chin, who traveled from her home in London for the interview, appears genuinely delighted to see Tomita, saying, "Now I have a daughter. She's my film daughter, but Tamlyn is like my own. We are constantly in touch and we write, `Dear Mother, Dear Daughter.' I'm glad that her real mother is not jealous."
The camaraderie between the eight actresses is unusual in the movie business but extraordinarily similar to the relationships between the first and second generation Chinese-American characters in "The Joy Luck Club." The screenplay, written by Amy Tan, the author of the best-selling novel, and Ron Bass, adroitly captures the book's central theme of the difficulties and benefits of being from two cultures. Although the novel was translated into 19 languages, the story of the generational conflicts of four young women struggling to be successful American citizens while coming to grips with their Chinese heritage-as personified by their mothers-is uniquely American.
The mothers have gathered at a weekly mah-jongg game in San Francisco, known as the Joy Luck Club, for as long as their daughters can remember. There they relive their tumultuous pasts and discuss their dreams for their daughters' futures. Their aspirations are summed up by one...