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Saving Face is a clever little film that uses humour to make its point. In her feature debut, Chinese-American filmmaker Alice Wu has created an energetic and endearing story about three generations of a Chinese immigrant family.
Wilhelmina (Michelle Krusiec) is a young, skilled surgeon working in Manhattan. She still goes home to Queens every week for the Chinese social party and to visit her family -- her very traditional grandparents and her widowed mother (Joan Chen).
Her visits give her mom a chance to attempt to play match-maker, and Wilhelmina -- Wil -- plays along. Mom can attempt to arrange any marriage she likes, but as Wil is a lesbian, it's not going to work.
At one such mixer, Wilhelmina exchanges glances with an attractive woman. That woman is Vivian (Lynn Chen), a ballet dancer who has known Wil since they were both little girls.
But before the flirtation with Vivian goes anywhere, Wilhelmina's quiet private life in New York is upended by the sudden arrival of her mother.
Wilhelmina's mother, aged 48, is pregnant. She won't say who the father is. Her own aged parents (Wilhelmina's grandparents) are shocked. Wil isn't too thrilled about it herself.
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These two dutiful daughters are now stuck with each other and must learn to adjust to each other's ways.
How is Wilhelmina ever going to embark on an affair if her mother is living with her? How is mother going to survive being rejected by her parents and by the traditional Chinese community in which she lived? Can Wil find her pregnant mom a husband?
And why is all this potential drama so funny?
For all the carry-on about race, creed, religion and sexual orientation, Saving Face is a film about finding love in one's life. And it concerns family and the relationship between a mother and a daughter. The situations in the film are often absurd, but you laugh with these characters, not at them.
It's the writing that's outstanding. Saving Face got made because Wu's script won a contest; the final product has been a hit at festivals and an audience award-winner for Best Film at the 2005 Inside Out Fest here in Toronto.
Saving Face is in English and Mandarin, with English subtitles.
(This film is rated PG)