Saving Face

Infobox Film
name = Saving Face


caption = "Saving Face" film poster
director = Alice Wu
producer = Will Smith
James Lassiter
Teddy Zee
writer = Alice Wu
narrator =
starring = Michelle Krusiec
Joan Chen
Lynn Chen
music = Anton Sanko
cinematography = Harlan Bosmajian
editing = Susan Graef
Sabine Hoffmann
distributor = Sony Pictures Classics
released = September 12, 2004
runtime = 91 minutes
country = USA
language = English, Mandarin, Shanghainese
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website = http://www.sonyclassics.com/savingface/
amg_id = 1:313456
imdb_id = 0384504

"Saving Face" is a 2004 American romantic comedy drama film directed by Alice Wu. The film focuses on Wilhelmina, a young Chinese-American surgeon; her unwed, pregnant mother; and her dancer girlfriend.

The name itself is a reference to the pan-East Asian social concept of face.

Plot

"Saving Face" follows Wilhelmina, a young Chinese-American surgeon as she deals with her unwed mother's pregnancy, and the obligations of her dancer girlfriend Vivian. Wil struggles with allocating time between her mother, who is shunned by the Chinese-American community for being pregnant and unwed and thus has come to live with Wil, and her girlfriend, Vivian, whom she presents to her mother as only a friend. At the same time, Wil's mother must decide whether the demands of her father's reputations, or the demands of her own heart, are more important. Wil's mother soon realizes that she must marry a man named Cho to regain her father's "face" and not be an embarrassment. Wil then finds out that her mother is in love with someone else and rushes to break up her wedding. At the same time Wil loses Vivian because she is afraid of going public so Vivian leaves for Paris. After three months, Vivian's and Wil's mothers reunite the two at a party and they end up kissing in front of everyone in the center of the dance floor.

Background

Alice Wu, who directed the movie, wrote the script several years earlier, drawing on her own experiences "coming out."cite news
last =Johnson
first =G. Allen
coauthors =
title =Alice Wu saved up her own doubts and struggles and turned them into the new comedy 'Saving Face'
work =
pages =
language =English
publisher = San Francisco Chronicle
date = June 6, 2005
url =http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/06/DDGCHD3GOT1.DTL
accessdate = ] In 2001, the script won the CAPE screenwriting award, which led to the production of the film. Filming began in fall 2003 on the $2.5 million project. cite news
last =Leibowitz
first =Ed
coauthors =
title =Kissing Vivian Shing
work =
pages =
language =English
publisher = New York Times
date = May 29, 2005
url =http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/movies/29leib.html
accessdate = 2008-07-06]

Featuring the New York Chinese-American community, the film is in a mixture of Mandarin Chinese and English.

Cast

* Michelle Krusiec — Wilhelmina Pang
* Joan Chen — Hwei-lang Gao (Ma)
* Lynn Chen — Vivian Shing
* Jin Wang — Wai Gung (Grandpa)
* Guang Lan Koh — Wai Po (Grandma)
* Jessica Hecht — Randi
* Ato Essandoh — Jay
* David Shih — Norman
* Brian Yang — Little Yu
* Nathaniel Geng — Stimson Cho
* Mao Zhao — Old Yu

External links

* [http://www.sonyclassics.com/savingface/ Official site]
*imdb title | id=0384504 | title=Saving Face
* [http://sfcampaign.blogspot.com/ "Saving Face" Blog]
* [http://www.afterellen.com/People/2005/5/krusiec-chen.html AfterEllen.com Interview with Michelle Krusiec and Lynn Chen]
* [http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/saving_face/ "Saving Face" at Rotten Tomatoes]

References