Why Alice Wu’s Saving Face is the most important Asian-American lesbian film ever made

This is the latest instalment in a feature series reflecting on instances of East meets West in world cinema, including China-US co-productions. Sometimes seemingly modest films have the greatest making-of stories. So it is with the 2004 romcom Saving Face, the first American film about an Asian-American lesbian couple to get a cinema release. The story of New York surgeon Wilhelmina “Wil” Pang (Michelle Krusiec), her new love Vivian (Lynn Chen) and her pregnant – and, crucially, unmarried – 48-year-old mother Ma (Joan Chen), Saving Face was written and directed by the remarkable Alice Wu. Born to Taiwanese-American parents in California, Wu studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aged just 16, then Stanford, before taking a job at Microsoft. She enrolled in a screenwriting course “on a whim” and wrote Saving Face, a fictionalised account of how she came out to her mother, as her first script. Next, she left her job, moved to New York and gave herself five years to actually make the film. Just before her self-imposed deadline, she succeeded. “I was trying to make the biggest romantic comedy I could on a tiny budget, with all Asian-American actors and half of it in Mandarin Chinese,” Wu says. Any studios that showed an interest wanted to make the characters white. “Everyone wanted it to be My Big Fat Greek Wedding; they wanted to cast Reese Witherspoon or someone as the daughter,” she says. “That might have worked … But the specific details keep things emotionally authentic.” Wu is right, of course. While Saving Face is both funny and romantic, it is the way it uses her heritage that helps it stand apart – like a jovial The Joy Luck Club (1993). Week after week, single Wil heads to Planet China, an Asian banquet hall in Queens, to meet her relatives and endure her mother’s misguided matchmaking attempts. Or, as Wil calls it, making the “pilgrimage to Flushing to swim in the Chinese gene pool”. At Planet China, we see choruses of chattering aunts, husbands muttering on the sidelines, and newly minted couples dancing awkwardly in the middle. It is a witty introduction to the interconnectedness of Asian-American life and, like much of Saving Face, feels both affectionate and exasperated. It is also here that Wil sees Vivian for the first time, a lovely moment that stops her – and the film – in their tracks. Wil and Vivian have real chemistry, but there are barriers to them being together – not least Wil’s fear of being rejected by her community. We see the stakes early on when her grandfather (Jin Wang) throws Ma out for bringing shame on the family. “When I think of all we’ve sacrificed in the old country to give you kids a better life in the new one,” he says. Soon, Wil is juggling the expectations of her mother, who cannot acknowledge her daughter’s sexuality, and the more relaxed Vivian, who wants to go public. At one point we see Wil and Vivian semi-naked in bed together as Ma’s voice interrupts on the answerphone. Later, when Ma and Vivian finally meet, it is at a brilliantly awkward dinner. Ma asks Vivian whether she has a boyfriend, openly disapproves of her dancing career and complains that she hardly gets to see Wil. “Me neither!” Vivian says. Mortified, Wil tries to gulp down her food as fast as possible. Mostly, however, what shines through is a sense of optimism. No matter how great their differences, everybody comes to a better understanding of each other over the course of the film. And for all their foibles – Ma is particularly spiky – we hope they end up happy. “I want [people] to come away with this feeling that, no matter who they are, whether they are gay or straight, or whatever their cultural make-up is, that if there is something that they secretly wanted, whether it’s this feeling that they could actually have that great love or whatever it is, that it’s never too late to have that,” Wu says. “I want them to leave the theatre feeling a sense of hope and possibility.” Saving Face went on to win the Audience Choice Award at the 2005 Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan and, in 2019, was named one of “the 20 best Asian-American films of the last 20 years” by the Los Angeles Times. It also helped to inspire the next generation of Asian-American filmmakers. Crazy Rich Asians actress Awkwafina called Saving Face “the first film that spoke to me as an Asian-American”, while Always Be My Maybe’s Ali Wong said it proved “Asian-Americans were capable of creating great art”. For The Farewell writer-director Lulu Wang, Wu was the pioneer. “There was Ang Lee, there was Alice [Wu], but it was a very select few that were really trying to push the boundaries,” Wang says, adding, “Alice did it before any of us.” Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

Why Alice Wu’s Saving Face is the most important Asian-American lesbian film ever made

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Alice Wu fought to film Saving Grace with an all Asian-American cast, and the film inspired a generation of Asian-American filmmakers

Alice Wu fought to film Saving Grace with an all Asian-American cast, and the film inspired a generation of Asian-American filmmakers