Wayne Wang

Two Wayne Wangs share one filmography. The first is the Hong Kong born independent who became a pioneer of Asian-American cinema, one of the earliest Chinese-American directors to hold real ground in Hollywood, working small and close to contemporary Asian-American domestic life. The second directed Maid in Manhattan and Last Holiday for the studios, competently, which is harder than it sounds and earns him less credit than it should.

The independent films carry the sensibility. The Joy Luck Club (1993) put four pairs of mothers and daughters on a mainstream American screen and did it without softening the arguments. Smoke (1995) turned a Brooklyn cigar shop into a place where people swap stories, and its improvised companion piece Blue in the Face was shot around the same setting with much of the same cast. Chinese Box (1997) went back to Hong Kong during the handover. The Center of the World (2001) is the coldest and least ingratiating thing he has made, and it arrived directly after his biggest commercial hit, which tells you something about how he plans a career.

The studio assignments are steadier than they are interesting: Anywhere but Here (1999), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), the literary adaptation Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2011), the late Spanish-language While the Women Are Sleeping (2016). The very early low-budget work that first made his name is not among the credits listed here, which slightly flatters the studio side of the ledger.