Saving Face, 2004
Dir. Alice Wu

Programmed by Naomi

Languages: English, Mandarin, Shanghainese
Runtime: 91 min
Format: DCP

Alice Wu’s debut film is a hilarious, tender, and deeply affecting rom-com that broke barriers for Asian American and queer cinema in the early 2000s.

Closeted surgeon Wil (Michelle Krusiec) navigates a secret romance with ballerina Vivian (Lynn Chen) all the while contending with her 48-year-old widowed and pregnant mother, played by Joan Chen, whose public missteps and family gossip turn Wil’s Manhattan apartment into a theater of chaos.

The film’s title references a Chinese idiom: to “lose face” is to endure public shame or the perception of dishonoring one’s family, while to “save face” is to patch together reputation and social standing. Mother and daughter embark on parallel quests, negotiating family duties, cultural expectations, and personal desires, all while Wu, who wrote the script while still working as a software engineer in the late 90s, critiques generational misogyny, hypocrisy, and the notion of upholding tradition as a dictator for truth.

SHOWTIMES

Friday, January 9
6 pm & 8:30 pm

Saturday, January 10
6 pm & 8:30 pm

Sunday, January 11
3 pm

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