Saving Face

Synopsis:

For 28-year old New Yorker Wilhelmina "Wil" Pang (Michelle Krusiec), life is a juggling act between a promising career as a surgeon and her responsibilities as a dutiful daughter. Like the #7 train she takes to visit her Chinese family on a weekly basis, Wil is perpetually in transit between two worlds. The expectations of the Flushing, Queens society she is from and the desires that alienate her from it have made Wil content to live below the surface -- even if it means playing an inadvertent game of charades with her widowed mother (Joan Chen) and the old world Ma represents. The masquerade is comic even in its pain as Wil tolerates Ma's weekly set ups with eligible Chinese-American boys at the Friday Chinese socials; but it quickly becomes a farce when Ma's mask cracks first.

One night, Wil comes home to find Ma on her doorstep - pregnant. Disgraced by the Chinese community, and with no where else to go, Ma moves in with her daughter, making it difficult for Wil to nurture a budding relationship with gorgeous dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen). As her carefully compartmentalized worlds collide, Wil is forced to find her mother a husband, placate her girlfriend, and choose between breaking a cycle of keeping up appearances, or risk losing the girl she loves.

SAVING FACE is a romantic comedy about a daughter struggling to understand her mother's heart, which ultimately allows her to understand her own. It is the story of unspoken loves, contemporary and cultural taboos, and the journey of two women towards living their lives honestly.

Michelle Krusiec was nominated for Best Actress at the GOLDEN HORSE AWARDS 2005.

Yup, I caught this movie and I quite liked it. It made me laugh! Haha... The movie was laugh out loud funny but yet heartwarming. Though I felt there might have been some stereotyping of the Chinese-American community, I think it's forgivable.

What I liked best about the movie was the relationship between Wil and Vivian. Vivian is a very beautiful, sensual young woman, very confident in her sexuality. Wil is attracted to her, but is less confident in publicly expressing her affection for Vivian. And this movie has got one of the most beautiful sex scenes ever done by Asian Actors, totally beating any Asian man-woman bed scenes that I have seen so far, and way way way better than the tormenting bed scenes in the recent Korean movie April Snow (For my partial review on April Snow, please refer to the bottom-most comment here.) My stoopid brother was crapping about only one breast being shown in this R(A) movie... what the heck (understand why I said he was making crap comments?)... Anyway, what I felt was that they made the lesbian sex scene so beautiful that disgust was the last thing on my mind, and I was wondering maybe I should consider getting into a lesbian relationship as well. Haha!

I never quite understood why Ma (Joan Chen) rented a porn video, and I couldn't decide if in the scene that Vivian was teaching Wil to fall without hurting herself, did Will fall twice because she really let herself go, or was it really because she went weak in the knees when Vivian moved so close to her (yah, this second hypothesis is a bit duh ah)?

Anywayz, bottomline, excellent movie, highly recommended.