Brandon Judell
Saving Face
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Michelle Krusiec as Wilhelmina Pang and Joan Chen as Ma in "Saving Face.". Photo by Larry Riley. |
Director/Writer: Alice Wu
Cast: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Richard Chang, Pamela-Payton
Wright
Screens at Sundance as part of the American Spectrum slate. Release date May
27, 2005.
A film can be socially significant and extremely affable without being notably good, and these first two traits save face for "Saving Face." After all, when have you ever seen a light comedy about two Chinese-American lesbians trying to build a relationship? Never, quite assuredly.
Employing a sit-com approach, director/writer Alice Wu, who received her MA in computer science at Stanford University, tells the tale of Wilhelmina Pang (Krusiec), a 28-year-old medical resident, who falls in love with the exquisite Vivian (Lynn Chen), a New York City Ballet ballerina with a preference for modern dance.
Well, falling in love is easy. Keeping it going is the hard part, especially when you’re stuck in a close-knit, highly-traditional community circle full of gossiping elders. As one character notes: “One million Chinese people. Two degrees of separation.”
Vivian, though, is brazen about her new affair and couldn’t care less about naysayers. She wants to tell the world. Wil, as her friends call her, is a bit more inhibited. And when her 49-year-old, unmarried mom (Joan Chen) winds up pregnant and has to move in with her, Wil really feels the constraints placed upon her affair of the heart.
Truthfully, there are moments here that will warm the cockles of any girl-on-girl aficionado. When Wil and Viv are wooing each other, you can’t help but root for the duo’s happiness. As for Joan Chen, whom we still adore from Twin Peaks and The Last Emperor, she is as lovely as ever.
The problem arises with the direction, implausible set-ups, and numerous performances. Comic moments are often staged haphazardly, plots devices seem just that, the editing by Susan Graef and Sabine Hoffman is flaccid, and the acting spans from naturalistic to way too broad. Jin Wang and Guang Lan Koh, however, as recalcitrant grandpa and accepting grandma are examples of what are right.
Yet in this odd era of total acceptance of gays on the tube but not in the church, at the hairdresser’s but not on the wedding aisle, Saving Face is sadly far too relevant to dismiss. It will also occasionally make you smile. That’s worth ten dollars, isn’t it?
Trivia fact: Will Smith, who refused to kiss another man on the film set of Six Degrees of Separation, is one of Saving Face’s producers. [Judell]
Copyright © Brandon Judell 2005
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