Rediscovering ‘Saving Face’ two decades later as an out lesbian

Wu includes scenes at a local hair salon, where aunties gossip about their kin’s professions, matchmaking romantic prospects based on elite job titles. The snobbery in their community is not that different from that of career-oriented New York transplants who strive for success as if their reputations depend on it. In Wil’s case, she juggles multiple identities to avoid ostracism: the subservient resident to her attending physician, the cool co-worker and neighbor to her non-Chinese colleagues and friends, and the dutiful daughter to her mother, Hwei-lan (Joan Chen), who recently got kicked out of Wil’s grandparents’ home for getting pregnant out of wedlock. Meeting her future girlfriend, Vivian (Lynn Chen), at the weekly Chinese gathering where Wil’s grandfather (Jin Wang) is a revered professor, becomes both a blessing and a threat to Wil’s carefully curated persona. It’s a threat I can relate to while I was still closeted. The threat of getting disowned by the community that raised me was enough to thwart any risks. But like Wil, I pondered if lesbianism was as risky as I perceived it to be. Hwei-Lan and Vivian present two opposing consequences for taking risks: either forced conformity or convincing your community to redefine its rigid criteria for membership.

Unlike Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Chinese lesbians and their love story are front and center in this before-its-time rom-com, instead of as a supporting narrative. No A-list celebrities were cast in this Will Smith-produced blockbuster, yet Wu made it commercially viable without casting white actors or abandoning the lesbian story arc. Don’t expect the raunchiness of Blue is the Warmest Color, the camp of But I’m a Cheerleader, the heartbreak of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, or the controversy of Tár. It is, however, reminiscent of the hopeful ending in Carol—although Wil and Vivian’s make-out scene on the dance floor amongst their straightlaced elders is more fantastical compared to the conclusion of Todd Haynes’ 1950s New York sapphic period drama from 2015, where two closeted lovers make piercing eye contact across the room at a dinner party.

Knocked up out of wedlock

Wu unveils the characters’ repressed desires by defying societal customs, risking exposure to ridicule. There’s Hwei-lan, widowed too soon in her late 40s, yet using her newfound singlehood to explore her sexuality by sleeping with a man she’s not married to and decades her junior—thus breaking the “rule” that you have to be married to have a child. She keeps the baby daddy a secret despite her father pressuring her to divulge his name. This catapults the hunt for an eligible bachelor she can wed. In today’s reality, she likely wouldn’t get banished for getting knocked up, and her parents would actively participate in raising her child. She’s in her 40s and has proven competent enough to raise Wil, so Hwei-lan’s father’s overreaction, compared to today’s more accepting attitudes toward adult single motherhood, would feel more age appropriate for a teen pregnancy.

My own conservative family today would provide adequate prenatal care to continue our bloodline rather than neglect pregnant mothers expecting babies born out of wedlock. Considering the estranged fathers and fathers raising multiple families that complicate my ancestry, my elders condone procreating outside of marriage, unlike what this film portrays. But Wu needed the grandfather to banish Hwei-lan and push her into invading Wil’s privacy. Any Asian American adult cohabitating with their parents can relate to this compromise—we all have secrets we feel the need to hide from our families so we choose to move out of the house. This mother-daughter dynamic of slowly unraveling secrets is comedic on the surface yet tender at its core. Fears of judgment are allayed upon learning that one secret isn’t more controversial than the other, but the shame that compounds those fears motivated their choices nonetheless.

Shifting attitudes around lesbianism

Another “rule” would be “traditional” dating, broken by Vivian’s choice to be openly gay, casually keeping her mother in the loop about her relationship with Wil. She’s a foil to Wil, who’s still closeted despite Hwei-lan having walked in on her once while being intimate with another woman. Wil commiserates with her neighbor, Jay (Ato Essandoh), about how Hwei-lan set her up on dates with men afterward. I’ve personally been out to my family for more than a decade now, yet my folks still try to set me up with single men—their subtle attempt at conversion therapy. This casual disapproval rings true to real-life situations in that it serves as a warning before parents resort to drastic measures. It’s a reenactment of how denial is wielded as a tool to ward off divergence of any kind—a testament to how little individuality exists in communal circles.

One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when Hwei-lan tries to set Vivian up with Jay the moment she senses that she’s not just her daughter’s “nice Chinese friend.” Wu exhibits the casual anti-Blackness pervasive in Asian households through Hwei-lan’s repulsion toward Jay, an issue that persists today even though Black and Asian interracial couples are becoming increasingly visible. Wu creates tension under the guise of polite smiles, hospitality toward unwanted guests, and thwarting liaisons. Chen’s nuanced expressions accurately portray how Asian parents passively steer their children away from relationships they think are sure to get people talking. Wil also succumbs to cultural pressure. Viewers spot it in the way she reluctantly agrees to dance with another vetted bachelor at the weekly Chinese gathering, how she only touches Vivian in private, and how she doesn’t flat-out admit to her mother that she’s gay until after a family tragedy.

Vivian obeys her father by becoming classically trained in ballet. She briefly performs modern dance to defy him, while pursuing a ballet residency in Paris to appease him. Once Wil is accepted into her residency, her boss, and Vivian’s father (Louyong Wong), pressures Wil to break up with her so his daughter can “see her full potential.” My hunch on Wil giving in to her boss’s request is less about setting Vivian free to self-actualize, and more about her own career advancement, coupled with the fear of coming out. It’s controversial enough to date a boss’s daughter, and I highly advise against it—even when HR incentivizes employees for referrals/nepotism—but their lesbian relationship would be more widely accepted today.

The generational divide is fleshed out in parent-child exchanges where one generation prioritizes group acceptance for survival, while the other yearns for individuality.

However, I wouldn’t be so quick to call Vivian’s father a villain, just as I refuse to flag Hwei-lan as a bad mother. Although his request to Wil adds another obstacle to her already stressed relationship with Vivian, these immigrant parents have raised highly competent adults in a country that favors white people for positions with high barriers to entry. The generational divide is fleshed out in parent-child exchanges where one generation prioritizes group acceptance for survival, while the other yearns for individuality. It’s safe to conclude that the previous generations yielded to “rules” to stay alive. And since Hwei-lan, Wil, and Vivian enjoy privileges that were inaccessible to their elders, they feel obligated to abide by now-arbitrary customs to pay it forward to the next generation. It’s beyond homophobia—it’s a nationalistic duty to preserve Chinese Americans’ existence by marrying, reproducing, and economically thriving in a nuclear and strictly Chinese unit.

Older woman, younger man

Wu’s finishing touch on her broken “rules” involves age-appropriate dating once it’s revealed that Little Yu (Brian Yang), a man young enough to be her son, is actually Hwei-lan’s baby daddy. This clarifies why Little Yu habitually passes packages to Wil—he’s sending Eastern medicine to his pregnant girlfriend. While on the bus after ditching Hwei-lan’s arranged marriage, Wil asks her mother why she hid the affair. The latter admits that she was waiting for him to speak up. This leads viewers to question whether age-gap heterosexual relationships are still taboo (at least when the woman is older).

In traditional Chinese culture, it’s socially acceptable for husbands to be significantly older than their wives to combine fertility and financial security. Hwei-lan goes on multiple first dates with moneyed Chinese men older than her, and ironically enough, she recommends Little Yu to Wil, telling her that Wil could marry into his pension plan cause he’s an MTA employee. Despite comprehensive government benefits, the average MTA employee earns lower wages than corporate employees in New York.

Cho (Nathanel Geng), the older professional Wil’s grandfather arranges to marry Hwei-lan could provide more for Little Yu’s child. Furthermore, the age of Hwei-lan’s deceased first husband remains unknown. Did she pursue Little Yu to prevent the loneliness of getting abandoned by older men? It’s a cop-out for her community or viewers to label her a cougar. But today when women are attaining more degrees and higher earning potential than men, it’s worth asking if Hwei-lan is better off dating a younger man. Men too have higher mortality rates than women, so why not criticize the expectations for women to marry older men? Attitudes around significant age gaps in dating remain a hot-button topic. The biological complications that may come with geriatric pregnancies and ethics around inter-generational liaisons continue to be a point of contention. Nonetheless, Wu gives viewers a happy ending once we catch a glimpse of a healthy baby surrounded by a big Chinese family before the credits start rolling. Besides, Hwei-lan can finally date regardless of what the aunties will say at the next mahjong meetup.