FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
SAVING FACE
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
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