I’ve spent a week two weeks letting this ‘review’ sit in draft mode but no amount of stewing is making it any more coherent than when I started writing. For better or worse this is a rambling train of thoughts kind of deal about a movie called Saving Face. This film ended up on my Netflix queue years after it was recommended to me by an acquaintance; I say acquaintance because apart from our views on filmmaking we have little else in common.
So, about the movie. It’s a romantic comedy (says Netflix) with the ethnic twist – think My Big Fat Greek Wedding – except the ethnic community in this flick is the Chinese Americans of Flushing, NY. Twenty minutes into it I began to grow impatient with the story. See, our protagonist Wilhemina or Wil an up and coming surgeon, has the hots for ballerina Lynn. This is supposedly the romantic part of romantic comedy. Unfortunately the lack of chemistry between the two actresses results in a very, very, very dull storyline of girl meets girl, girl likes girl but girl can’t commit to girl. It was just. not. working. However, Michelle Krusiec (yes, she from Dicovery Channel’s Travelers) who plays Wil hits the comedic moments spot on and that may have been her saving grace.
Thankfully, though, the movie was so much more than just a cheap attempt at writing a lesbian romantic comedy. It slowly revealed itself as a layered story of transgenerational relationships. Ya, it’s a little bit like Joy Luck Club like that lor.. And Joan Chen can play funny as well as she can play drama. She is Wil’s ‘Ma’ and one fine day shows up at her daughter’s apartment looking for a place to stay, having been thrown out of her parents home in Flushing for getting pregnant. Who’s the daddy… that’s what we spend the entire length of the movie wondering.
This movie tries to be everything at once and ends up not having a one true, strong theme to push the story from beginning to end. The dialog is at time stilted, at times real, at time real excruciating (during the romantic moments, mostly) and sometimes the old chinese people in the movie sound like they are reading off strips coming out of fortune cookies.
Anyway, because you probably won’t see it in the more popular movie cable channels this one was worth renting.