SAVING FACE
Directed & Written by: Alice Wu.
Produced by: Teddy Zee, James Lassiter & Will Smith.
Director of Photography: Harlan Bosmajian.
Edited by: Susan Graef & Sabine Hoffman.
Music by: Alysia Oakley.
Released by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Country of Origin: USA. 95 min. Rated: R.
With: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen & Jin Wang.

Wilhelmina "Wil" Pang (Michelle Krusiec), a 28-year-old New Yorker, lives in two worlds: that of Flushing, Queens where her eccentric, widowed mother (Joan Chen) forces her into dance formals and marriage arrangements; and her own world in Manhattan, where she nurtures a promising career as a surgeon. Thrown into this chaos is Wil's homosexuality - a taboo if there is one in her strict Chinese family.

Wil's charade keeps everyone in both of her worlds happy until she falls in love with a gorgeous dancer, Vivian (Lynn Chen). The two actresses spark a profound onscreen chemistry that rivals that of the male gay couple in Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet. But one day, Wil comes home from a date only to find her mother in front of her apartment, pregnant and without a husband. From then on, it is up to Wil to find her now live-in mom a husband to amend the family's tarnished reputation while keeping Vivian on the down-low.

Saving Face presents cultural fusions dear and familiar to New Yorkers - the F train linking Flushing and Manhattan, Wil's grandfather practicing Tai chi in the middle of a basketball court and the hilarious generation gap between the Americanized daughter and her traditional mother. The film's main fault is how the rather predictable narrative structure and the recycled fish-out-of-water jokes fail to balance the gravity and the comedy of the situation that made The Wedding Banquet as poignant as it was funny. However, the fine performances by its ensemble cast make Saving Face one of the most memorable Asian-American identity films to come out in recent years. Marie Iida
May 26, 2005