The 52: Saving Face
From June 2023 to June 2024 I'll be watching a lgbtqia+ film each week and coming back here with my thoughts, feelings and plenty of hopes we aren't met with the "kill your gays" trope. I call this The 52.
I grew up being aware of this film in the same way I was aware of (the masterpiece that is) Imagine Me and You, but I never really twigged it was a queer film. UNTIL NOW.
Saving Face was a nice film to put on as the nights got a little shorter, snuggling up and just watching rather than focusing equal attention on whatever craft project I’m currently working on and the film playing before my glassy eyes. It was enjoyable in the way You’ve Got Mail or Two Weeks Notice or those cheesy romantic films of the late 90s are, and the fact it’s queer and represents chinese americans is just everything I want.
Saving Face follows three main characters: Wilhelmina (Wil), Vivian, and Hwei-Lan Gao (Ma). Wil and Vivian are our lesbians and Ma knows it, although she persists in trying to set her daughter, Wil, up with a man through blind obstinacy.
Wil… is a character I struggled to truly like, at least from the view point of “are she and Vivian a couple I want to see together”, because while Vivian is willing to put her heart and soul into their relationship, Wil seems unable, unwilling, uncommitted and soon we begin to see how the side of her that is closeted, that doesn’t stop her mother trying to set her up, that doesn’t stand up for her and Vivian, all combines to put a terrible strain on the relationship.
Meanwhile Ma is kicked out of her parents home because she’s unmarried and pregnant, and again we witness Wil’s lack of boundaries, this time with the relationship she enables with her mother when Ma moves in with her. I did really enjoy seeing a complicated, multi-layered mother-daughter relationship between these two and I think it was written (and acted) really, really well, but even so I wanted Wil to be a bit less of a doormat to her own happiness.
I’d absolutely watch Saving Face again. It was a complicated watch the first time because all I wanted was Vivian to be happy (i might have fallen a teensy bit in love, ok, ok, yes I too would collapse on the floor if I stood in front of her) and whenever a character allows someone else to steer their life I cannot stand it, but for a cutesy early 00s rom com? It ticks all the boxes and a few more besides.
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