On Criterion, I watched the 2004 comedy-drama Saving Face, written and directed by Alice Wu, centering on inter-generational family drama, queer issues, Chinese culture in New York City, and traditions. I had heard of this film before, and really liked Wu's 2020 Netflix film The Half of It, as a teen lesbian take on Cyrano de Bergerac, but I hadn't seen this film, which was groundbreaking at the time as a Hollywood movie that centered on Chinese-Americans, the first since The Joy Luck Club over a decade prior. The film briefly references that film and The Last Emperor (which star Joan Chen had been one of the leads in) in a video store scene, where the film compares Hollywood depictions of Chinese women to general audiences to pornographic depictions of Chinese women in films geared towards white men.
The film centers on Dr. Wilhemnia "Wil" Pang (Michelle Krusiec), a surgeon living in New York City, who is a lesbian but is closeted to her mother Hwei-Lan (Joan Chen) and her mother's friends. Hwei-Lan's friends are Chinese women who live in Flushing, Queens and often gossip about each other, especially if others don't stick to traditionalist mores. Hwei-Lan is trying to set her daughter up with her friend's son to get her married, but Wil is attracted to Vivian (Lynn Chen), a dancer with the New York City Ballet who has more of a freer, sexier air about her, is the daughter of one of Hwei-Lan's friends, and is recently divorced. Vivian's father turns out to be Wil's boss at the hospital, and she is struggling with her own relationship with her father due to wanting to pursue modern dance and leave the classical ballet world.
Wil discovers that her mother has been kicked out of her parents' home due to becoming pregnant at age 48 and out of wedlock, and her father shames her as if she is a child, talking down to her and worrying about what others will think of him, and she holds her head down in shame as if she is a young girl and not a grown woman of nearly 50 years old. She refuses to say who the father is, and she moves in with Wil, where they have a relationship where Hwei-Lan speaks Mandarin Chinese while Wil will respond in both Mandarin Chinese and English, being the daughter of immigrant parents where it is common to respond in English to the parent's native language as a bi-cultural person.
Joan Chen delivered a scene-stealing performance in this film, one of the best performances of her career. She plays Hwei-Lan in a shy, reserved way, feeling ambivalent about having this child but not considering abortion, and wanting to please her father and not break family traditions, including when her father is trying to marry her off to a friend because he doesn't want her to be alone or face the shame of being an unwed mother. And despite that she is clearly a beautiful woman, her spirit has been broken and she feels embarrassed to go out on dates at her age.
But her commitment to being traditional also has led her to deny the truth about her daughter's sexuality, not wanting to accept her being gay. Wil had told Vivian that her mother had once caught her with a girl and never brought it up again or acknowledged it, pushing her to date men. This denial ends up hurting Wil's burgeoning relationship with Vivian, where she's too scared to kiss Vivian in public or be open about her sexuality, worried about what others will think, and not live her life publicly as openly queer.
Chen and Krusiec have this familial warmth between the two of them that makes them believable as mother and daughter, showing the intimacy and fraught secrets in their relationship, when both would avoid uncomfortable truths or answering questions. But due to their closer relationship and breaking down those barriers, both are able to live more openly and more confidently with their truthful selves, changing their adherence to traditional values and repressive family cultures, and caring less about "saving face," the concept of performing roles to maintain the family's "proper" reputation in their community
I really loved this film, and connected to it a lot, despite not being queer or from an immigrant household. I really connected to the chokehold that upholding traditional ways of life can have on a person's life and mental health, and wanting to please family members at the risk of one's own happiness or freedom, to keep the peace and avoid confrontations. It's a really wonderful film, and I'm glad I watched it.
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