SAVING FACE

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: B-
Directed by: Alice Wu
Written by: Alice Wu
Cast: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Jin Wang,
Guang Lan Koh
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 4/11/05

The huge, unexpected success of Joel Zwick's "My Big Fat
Greek Wedding" indicates that there are still signs of life in
movies that deal with cross-cultural differences: the traditional
elders frowning upon the hip youths who express their love for
partners others than the ones chosen by dad or members of the
same cultural group.. In Alice Wu's debut directorial effort,
"Saving Face," the traditional grandfather, Jim Wai Gung (Jin
Wang) feels disgraced by the pregnancy of his 48-year-old
daughter, Ma (the prolific Joan Chen) not because of the
woman's age but because she will not reveal the identity of the
father of the expected baby. Gramps is determined to set his
middle-aged daughter up with a nice Chinese guy, say,
someone like Mr. Cho (Nathaniel Geng), who is a good man
able to support a wife but nonetheless a nerd whose idea of
saying good night to the woman he's courting is to kiss her
swiftly on the cheek.

The central character, however, is a 28-year-old surgeon, a
Chinese woman with the unlikely name of Wilhelmina Pang
(Michelle Krusiec), the product of a marriage between her
mother, Ma, and a now-deceased man who was chosen by
grandpa--the norm in the Chinese-American community in
Flushing, or at least it was de rigeuer three decades ago. The
title of the film comes from the concept that the older man, in
order to marry off his daughter years back and to find the now-
pregnant woman a new husband is doing so in order to save
face. Given the gossip that goes around the insular
Chinese-American community in Flushing, New
York–demonstrated amply in this movie–for Ma to give birth
unmarried would create a scandal.

Hell breaks loose when young Wil's eyes meet those of Vivian
(Lynn Chen) at a Friday night singles gathering. Though Wil is
a doctor, she appears to realize that she's gay only now, as she
and Vivian set up a round of hot dates in Manhattan, dates
which make Vivian think twice about accepting the four-year
contract she has won with a ballet company in Paris.

"Saving Face" is just moderately amusing, in part because
despite the uniqueness of Wil's relationship to her traditional
mother and grandfather, we in our theater seats have seen it all
before. Of course Ma's pregnancy at the age of forty-eight is a
major surprise for her friends in this community in Flushing, and
the fact that she is not married nor is willing to reveal
the father's name casts her as hardly a traditional parent. It's
also difficult to believe that when Wil and Vivian dance and
engage in a long smooch on the dance floor of the weekly
Chinese-American function, no one pays them any
heed–thereby forcing a happy ending while subverting the point
made throughout the story that this is a largely traditional ethnic
community. Lenser Harlan Bosmajian does not portray New
York as a particularly inviting town.

Still, writer-director has assembled a terrific cast, with Lynn
Chen a drop-dead gorgeous dancer, veteran actress Joan Chen
as the woman sandwiched between her dad's demands and her
daughter's sexual inclinations, and Michelle Krusiec as the
surgeon too busy with her studies and her hospital practice to
acknowledge her orientation.

Rated R. 97 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com