lishesquex | "Who's the Asian daddy?!"

I watched Saving Face last night and OMG it was awesome. I've been meaning to watch it for a while but I kept putting it off.  I'm so glad I watched it though.

For 28-year old New Yorker Wilhelmina "Wil" Pang (Michelle Krusiec), life is a juggling act between a promising career as a surgeon and her responsibilities as a dutiful daughter. Like the #7 train she takes to visit her Chinese family on a weekly basis, Wil is perpetually in transit between two worlds. The expectations of the Flushing, Queens society she is from and the desires that alienate her from it have made Wil content to live below the surface -- even if it means playing an inadvertent game of charades with her widowed mother (Joan Chen) and the old world Ma represents. The masquerade is comic even in its pain as Wil tolerates Ma's weekly set ups with eligible Chinese-American boys at the Friday Chinese socials; but it quickly becomes a farce when Ma's mask cracks first.

One night, Wil comes home to find Ma on her doorstep - pregnant.  Disgraced by the Chinese community, and with no where else to go, Ma moves in with her daughter, making it difficult for Wil to nurture her budding relationship with gorgeous dancer Vivian (Lynn Chen). As her carefully compartmentalized worlds collide, Wil is forced to find her mother a husband, placate her girlfriend, and choose between breaking a cycle of keeping up appearances, or risk losing the girl she loves.

SAVING FACE is a romantic comedy about a daughter struggling to understand her mother's heart, which ultimately allows her to understand her own. It is the story of unspoken loves, contemporary and culture taboos, and the journey of two women towards living their lives honestly.

Other unexpectedly cool things about this movie:

- The director has somehow produced a weird blend of Chinese and Western humour - it's like funny x 2.

- In the Chinese bits, the subtitles aren't literal translations sometimes, which makes it hilarious when I can understand both.  Like when the grandpa literally says: "Menopause? There's nobody in our family who suffers from menopause. That's just a ridiculous American invention." But the subtitles read: "Menopause? Nonsense! Only Americans freak out about menopause." It's just funny to see old Chinese dudes use words like "freak out".

- Sometimes the characters randomly switch to Shanghainese in the middle of dialogue, which is mind boggling for me because I've never heard Shanghainese spoken outside of family events/gatherings. And definitely never on TV or in a movie.

- Lines like "Who's the Asian daddy?!"

This is the movie I will watch with my mum when I come out and if she takes it well.