Take two

In probably the most crucial scene in Wayne Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the two main characters are embroiled in a quarrel. First there's Yilan, a mainland-born academic who has worked in the US for 12 years. Then there's her father, Mr Shi, who has come to help his divorced, dejected daughter. Minor bickering in Putonghua becomes a full-blown row - at the pivotal point of which Yilan switches to English, which has become her preferred language.

'If you grew up in a language in which you never learned to express your feelings it would be easier to talk in a new language,' she shouts. 'It makes you a new person.'

It's an episode from mainland-born American writer Yiyun Li's short story of the same name, and the basis for Wang's film. After reading that particular scene, the director insisted that Li include it in her screenplay, as it mirrors his own experiences about how language defines the expression of emotions.

'I consciously put that in because when my wife [beauty queen-turned-actress Cora Miao] and I first got married, I was much more comfortable speaking in English when we were in an argument,' says the Hong Kong-born filmmaker. 'I couldn't argue with her in Chinese because she's much better at it, and I felt the English language is much more expressive and emotional for me. So when we got to that point in that movie, I said to Faye [Yu Feihong, the mainland actress who plays Yilan], 'Can you say something in English that expresses how you feel?'. And she found a way to do it.'

The explosive exchange brings to the surface the thinly veiled antagonism between the pair, as Mr Shi (played by veteran American-Chinese actor Henry O) is intrigued and dismayed by his daughter's coldness while Yilan gets increasingly frustrated by her father's excessive doting and probing.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and its accompanying piece, The Princess of Nebraska, herald Wang's return to making films about the experiences of the Chinese in the US, his previous take at which was the screen adaptation of Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club in 1993.