Saving Face is about Wilhelmina (Wil) and her traditional Chinese mother Hwei-lang Gao. Gao has recently been found to be pregnant out of wedlock which shames her parents and causes them to kick her out of their house. Subsequently, Gao moves in with Wil. Wil is trying to get her mother to move on with her life through dating while simultaneously trying to hide her own gay dating life.
Saving Face is not a movie that’s all gay all the time. The plot lines of Wil’s relationship to her mother and to her girlfriend are roughly 50/50. I really liked Gao’s character and I liked seeing Wil, a queer character engage in dynamic relationships to not just a parent and not just a romantic partner but both! That’s rare for a queer movie. Often I find characters get isolated and end up with only one major confidant. Good on Saving Face for understanding that queer people can have more than one major relationship in their life.
Saving Face excellently balances having issues that relate to being queer or being Chinese but does so without reducing its characters or their plots down to only these identifiers. Some of Wil’s problems involve one or both of those issues but some of them are more generic. Because, magically, this film realizes that Chinese people and gay people and gay Chinese people have other traits beyond such things.
This is one of few movies that walks the line between drama and comedy successfully. It manages to have both successful dramatic scenes such as where Gao gets kicked out of her parents’ house balanced nicely with lighter scenes. For example, the romance between Wil and her girlfriend Vivian. Unusually, the queer element is one of the least angsty in this movie. Saving Face is all kinds of rare. The romance between Wil and Vivian is sweet, but not saccharine. They have valid relationship problems and depth individually and as a couple.
Genuinely funny yet effectively dramatic, Saving Face is a successful film with great characters, writing and performances. Saving Face is definitely a WLW move to check out.
Overall rating: 8.4/10
Other WLW films in similar genres
Mother-daughter relationships
Chinese family dynamics
I honestly regard this one as one of the best mainly due to my own Chinese heritage and my love for Alice Wu’s movies. Of course, those aren’t my only reasons; that would be shallow. I loved how well Mando and English intertwined in the movie. I’d say it was half-and-half between the two languages, and it fit well. I also like how they had Gao come to term with Wil’s sexuality in a natural way, rather than just doing it because they had to. The movie also depicts Chinese mother-daughter relationships so well that even if the story with Vivian didn’t exist or if it sucked, I’d still end up liking Saving Face. If it weren’t for the fact I can relate to a lot of the culture of being Chinese in America, maybe this movie would be less striking to me, but it really is so well done and captures a lot more than just a love story. It captures the expectations and the subtle judgements that Chinese aunties seem to never run out of!