Saving Face (R, 2005)

Ma (Joan Chen), lives with her mother (Guang Lan Koh) and father Wai Gung (Jin Wang) in Flushing, Queens. She's also mother to 28-year-old Wilhelmina (Michelle Krusiec). A dedicated surgeon, Wil is also a dutiful daughter: she runs daily, takes extra shifts at the hospital without complaint. Wil begins a relationship with Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballet dancer who'd rather be doing modern dance. While Wil is afraid to tell Ma she's a lesbian, Viv worries about disappointing her father, who thinks modern dance isn't "serious." When Ma becomes pregnant and won't name her child's father, much less marry him, her father kicks her out, so she moves in with Wil. Conflicts occur over space and expectations, especially when Ma tries to please her father by enduring an arranged dating process: the ordeal brings mother and daughter together in mutual appreciation and exasperation. Seeing her mother dressed to go out, Wil is stunned: "You're beautiful," she stammers, having never considered her mother an object of anyone's desire.

Alice Wu's sharp first feature brings together many relationship concerns. Though SAVING FACE includes a few typical romantic comedic elements -- the supportive next-door neighbor, gossipy community ladies, irascible grandfather, mistaken identities -- it also provides a nuanced look at immigrant transitions and at last, a layered, detailed role for wonderful Joan Chen.

The movie is especially smart about various concepts of "face," as reputation and legacy, but also as the means by which everyone of every culture gets through the days, performing in order to please others, to get ahead, to survive. Saving face is at once an acknowledgment of ritual and collective identity, a self-reinvention, a reclaiming of roots and resistance simultaneously. Against this backdrop, Wil and Vivian's romance becomes secondary to Wil and Ma's relationship.

Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Director: Alice Wu
Cast: Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Michelle Krusiec
Genre: Drama
Run time: 91 minutes
Theatrical release: May 27, 2005
DVD release: October 18, 2005
MPAA Rating: R
MPAA explanation: some sexuality and language