By My wife and I watched Saving Face a few nights ago. During the movie she asked me if I was bored, "Bored?" I asked. "How can I be bored? There are Asian lesbians in this film!"
Saving Face has a typical plotline that seems very familiar: Asian Americans growing up with values that conflict with their first-generation parents. It's been done before in The Joy Luck Club, and also in a Canadian film with Sandra Oh (Sideways) called Double Happiness. I highly recommend the latter, because (if memory still serves) Sandra Oh is very funny and charismatic. In Saving Face, we have not one, but two main characters who conflict with old world values. One is Wil, played by Michelle Krusiec (Bring It On, Mind of the Married Man), a doctor who has kept her lesbianism a secret from her family. Then there's her mother, Gao (played by Joan Chen) a 48 year old single woman who is mysteriously pregnant. It causes a great degree of scandal, forcing her to leave her parents home and live with her daughter. Just at this moment, Wil meets Vivian (played by Lynn Chen), an ultra hot ballerina. Needless to say, Mom cramps Wil's lifestyle. The rest of the movie consists of both women coming to terms with their romantic partners as well as each other. Joan Chen delivers a great performance in the movie, the best of her career. But the lead actors, Krusiec and Chen, don't seem that convincing as a lesbian couple. Maybe it's the point of the movie, to make Krusiec's character so distant that she's reluctant to kiss in public. During the scenes where they kiss, or the most notable topless scene in bed, it's just not that convincing. I just had a feeling that the actors weren't really going for it. I think the director should have gotten them high before that big bedroom scene and really let them go at each other. Or maybe they should have hired Grace Park from Battlestar Galactica to take over Krusiec's role? That would add another element to the mix, a Korean-Chinese lesbian pairing. Don't eat Kim Chee before the sex scene!
Saving Face is at least worth a rental. It's not as weepy or emotional as the Joy Luck Club. If you're a Joan Chen fan, you'll like it, though she doesn't have any toe kissing scenes. Lynn Chen is really a hot chick, I think she outta be in Stuff magazine. Krusiec is OK as the mousy lead, but she seemed much hotter as a slutty Asian masseuse in Mind of the Married Man. But all in all, this is really the best Asian lesbian coming of age flick I've ever seen, because it's the only one I've ever seen. You had better let me know if other flicks exist! Nuff said.
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