The Princess of Nebraska reveals a poignant twenty-four hours in the life of Sasha (Li Ling), a young, pregnant Chinese woman living in the U.S. She has traveled from Omaha, Nebraska, where she attends college, to San Francisco, intent on getting an abortion and confronting Boshen (Brian Danforth), the male friend of Yang, the unborn child's father. She wanders around the city, absorbed by feelings of confusion and doubt, wrestling with the choices life is throwing at her. It's as if she can tell that the choice she makes at this point will affect the rest of her life and even the lives of others.

As she journeys through the city, she meets May (Qing Lin), a Chinatown prostitute, who provides an unlikely and colorful companionship to the lonely young lady. In one stand-out scene, the two women discuss the movie Pretty Woman. Sasha asserts that even "a prostitute can become a princess for a night."

Director Wayne Wang returns to indie filmmaking with The Princess of Nebraska. A filmmaker since the 1980s, he directed 1993's The Joy Luck Club and, more recently, Maid in Manhattan (2002) and Because of Winn-Dixie (2005). The Princess of Nebraska is the second film he has created from the short stories of Yiyun Li, the first being A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. His work on films that focus on the immigrant experience seem to be his most endearing.

Li Ling, in her film debut, does well in her portrayal of a vulnerable woman at a turning-point. Her physical presence and performance are conveyed appropriately by Richard Wong's organic cinematography that includes extreme close-ups and zoom-ins, moving shots, and slow pull-outs, all on hand-held cameras.

The movie is very quiet, especially at the beginning. One of the loudest sounds we hear comes a fourth of the way into the film. It is the repeated noise of a stapler as Sasha emotionally binds up her diary pages, trying to banish four months of her life. The original music by Kent Sparling is subtle and succeeds in effectively punctuating the movie's undertones of reflection and unspoken consequence. In particular, Sparling's song "Night Lotus" adds to the intensity of a powerful scene at the end of the film.

Unlike its recent predecessor Bella, The Princess of Nebraska is not so much concerned with the outcome of its moral theme as with the journey—at least a part of the journey. In this, the film succeeds. For a brief moment in time, we are drawn in to Sasha's life, and it is both beautiful and frightening at the same time.