Movie-Saving Face

The generation gap never seems so apparent as it does between generations of immigrant parents and American born children. Not only does the typical age divide come into play, but a large cultural divide as well.

That is the focus of this light-hearted drama, Saving Face (2005). Joan Chen is a widowed mother of a young female surgeon. As a widow she still lives with her parents, in Chinatown, New York, speaking almost exclusively Chinese, interacting with only Chinese and seemingly content with that.

Her daughter, Wil, on the other hand, has an apartment of her own, outside of Chinatown, and is gay. When another woman, Vivian, from the same background comes into her life, it coincides with another familial shakeup...Wil's mother is pregnant, and her father is so outraged with his own lose of face, that he throws her out, and she has to live with Wil.

So Wil has two problems, how to balance this secret relationship she has (because she has not come out) and deal with the intrusion and pregnancy of her mother.

This is a fairly light-hearted, and sometimes really funny piece, but it is a drama, and we feel the angst of Wil mostly trying to cope between the traditions of her family, and who she is. And she sees how strong those traditions are with her grandfather's reaction to her mother's pregnancy.

I really liked this movie...the two younger female leads, who played Wil and Vivian are terrific and really engaging, and Joan Chen seems never to age. The story could have been merely about Wil and Vivian, but throwing the mother's situation in there gave it an extra dimension that added a lot to the movies vitality and message. The relationship between Wil and her mother is as interesting as between Wil and Vivian. And showing the cultural and generational divide, the difficulty is overcoming both of them, is very well done.