Wu Cares

I've had friends who love ketchup. Whenever they get fries, they get a prodigious amount of ketchup, until the result is akin to potato-tomato soup. I've always wondered why they do this. If fries are so tasty, why use ketchup. The answer is? Fries aren't always so tasty. They're greasy and icky, at times. Ketchup, on the other hand, has a level of consistency. Even when fries suck, you can add ketchup and make it taste better. So, are fries any good, if you always need ketchup to make it taste better? I wonder.

Last night (now June 20), at the E Street, they had a sneak preview of Saving Face. Ostensibly, this is a film about Asian American lesbians. Already, it's hitting two genres of films. Most gay/lesbian films are romantic comedies, or coming-of-age films, or somewhere on the light end of the spectrum.

Asian American films (not to be confused with period costume dramas from China, or even the period 60s and 70s Hong Kog of Wong Kar-Wai) are often about the Asian American experience. Almost always, it's about family, the conservative parents who still want to live life as in the old country, and the youth, who are embarrassed by their parents, while living life as members of the adopted society. It's also hard to avoid weddings in Asian fare. You see it in The Wedding Banquet (filmed by Ang Lee when he was making films in Taiwan, but really an Asian-American film). There's a wedding in Bend it Like Beckam. There's one here as well.

The real problem with gay films is that the relationship is almost always, pardon the pun, played straight. This is the story of Wil (short for, OMG, Wilhemena? Surely, even Asian parents wouldn't do this to their kids) and Vivian (though, the movie does get one fact right--if there's a suitable obscure American name, they'll find it for their kids). Unlike most films about gay love, neither the two leads are completely new to the situation. Still, that doesn't make the experience resonate any deeper.

Since the main story is often taken straight, with characters and their relationships being on the bland end, there is a need to either have strong minor characters, or a second plot. The second plot, minorly outlandish, is what's added. In the story, Wil's mother played by Joan Chen (dressed up to look rather motherly, rather than ravishing), is a single mother, who's husband may be dead or divorced (can't recall which), who is pregnant, in her 40s.

The story is a modern Scarlet Letter. Mom won't tell anyone who the father is, and her own father is so humiliated by the thought of an unwed daughter, he's ready to disown her. Meanwhile, Wil has been keeping a secret from her mother (not much of one, since her mother "knows" the truth, but denies it). Here are two stories about a daughter's shame to her mother. When Wil finally tells her mother (who has moved in to live with her after being disowned) that she's gay, her mother can't deal with it.

We in the audience can't believe this is happening, because her mother is in possibly a worse bind than Wil, and yet this is perhaps more true to life.

Saving Face suffers from a trite relationship and a screwball situation, and covers it with unusually canny observations about Asian American life. Even though this film is Asian American (set in Flushing NY), it's practically a foreign film when it comes to subtitles. More than half the dialogue is in Chinese.

There are small observations about Asian American life that seem right. Asian parents tend to be ambitious for their children. So, Wil's a doctor, and a talented one at that. Vivian is a dancer, and a talented one at that. Vivian's dad is a doctor, and wants her daughter to do ballet in Paris, while Vivian wants to do modern dance. Vivian is the confident artist type (which isn't so unusual for Asian Americans, even if many of them are doctors and engineers), while Wil is the shy, but determined doctor.

Wil's mother is always trying to set her up with some guy (and you find out why later), but even that's not so unusual in Asian society. Saving Face is good at realizing details of life as an Asian American, and yet, despite the paucity of the Asian American films in the mainstream, they tend to tread the same ground. I'd really like to see Indian Americans in a predominantly black neighborhood (which itself isn't so uncommon), because at least I'd see something I haven't seen before.

Asian American films need to reach beyond the stories of families, or at least, the ones we commonly see. Generation gap stories are common for Asian American films, but are hardly seen for any other ethnic group in the US. I understand there's something intriguing about clinging to an old culture while living in a new one, but there are other stories ot tell, too.

Saving Face has far less to say about lesbian relationships. Unlike other gay/lesbian films (well, i've mostly seen gay films), there's no other gay characters in the film (at least, not overtly so. It's possible that some of Wil's friends are gay, but it's never explicitly said). Even Beautiful Thing eventually works its way to some gay hangout. Vivian's mother is seen as being foward thinking as she doesn't seem to mind Vivian's preferences (though her mother is never seen on screen).

Gay films seem to have a difficult time with long-standing relations. After all, many fall the romantic comedy arc of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy breaks up with girl, and boy reunites with girl, where you can replace boy and girl with whatever permutation you want.

It's so much more innocent to deal with relationships as they are about to start, and give you the sense of happily ever after at the end, than it is to deal with the relationship in mid-stride. The writer is often feeling out the characters and their interactions, which is much easier than trying to figure out an established relationship.

If Wu seems to have a talent, it is in the light comedic touches of the film, which make it funny, without being totally embarassing. Wu doesn't have the crowd-pleasing instincts of Gurinder Suha, who at least makes her family trouble more realistic (the sister getting married is actually common among Indian families). Wu does resort to a few cliches. How many weddings must there be? How many times must a wedding be interrupted just as vows come.

And, how often must there be a breakup at an airport? At the time you're watching it, you may not care that this is like the twentieth time you've seen a scene at the airport, or the hundredth wedding that's going to be broken up. And yet, it shows a sign of laziness to reuse these plot points over and again.

Genre films, such as gay and lesbian romances, have a hard time rising to great films because they rely so much on using familiar ideas. Usually, if a film is partly successful, it's because they make observations that are particular to their audience. There's many funny lines in the film, and it's nice to see Asian Americans and it's nice that it's about lesbians and single mothers. It observes traditional Asian values (boo!) with non-traditional situations (unwed mother, lesbian daughter).

I left enjoying the lightness of touch, I liked the characters in the film. I recognized some of what the characters were going through, and the observations of Asian American life. However, in hindsight, is the whole film good when it is the observations and the humor that make it worth watching rather its central story. There's no subtext or anything clever like that. Somehow, I think it's not enough. Even though I want to see more Asian American fare, I also want to see directors stretch themselves more creatively too.