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SAVING FACE Send This Review to a Friend
Refreshing, different and romantically entertaining, “Saving Face” is a scintillating directorial debut for the clearly talented Alice Wu. We’ve had films about Italian, Greek and Jewish families. Now here’s one about a Chinese-American family in New York, with its own clash of old-world values and contemporary attitudes, spiced with well-acted characters one can enjoy and care about. The plot offers a rich stew of relationships and an open-minded viewpoint.
The beautiful Joan Chen here plays Ma, a widow who is aghast, as are her conservative parents, when she finds herself pregnant. But she won’t identify the father. She entertains a parade of oddball suitors and is pursued by one man whom she doesn’t love but who wants to marry her and provide a father for her child. That would be enough of a problem for a film, but her daughter Wilhelmina, a young doctor delightfully played by Michelle Krusiec, is trying to conceal that she is a lesbian, and she also has her hands full trying to look after her distraught mother.
The new love of Wil’s life is Vivian, a classical dancer, played by the lovely Lynn Chen, who is impatient with Wil’s difficulty in conducting their relationship in the open. What will happen to their affair?
Wu, who has also written the screenplay, creates enjoyable ethnic scenes, such as the community dances rife with gossip and matchmaking efforts. She also writes smart, revealing dialogue reflecting the assorted problems, and she gingerly handles the sexual liaison between Wil and Vivian with just enough explicitness to dramatize their love but nothing that would go too far. This is really an old-fashioned family film up-to-date outlook.
Some may find the way everything works out a bit too pat, but Wu is striking a blow for the idea of women being independent in their ability to go for the choices that make them happy rather than be bound by conventions that would make them miserable. The liberation of both mother and daughter makes for a strong, happy ending. Wu has a large cast that adds realism, and she handles the complexities of her film deftly. It is such a pleasure to find this independent gem that stands in contrast to the formula films from Hollywood. A Sony Pictures Classics release
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