Saving Face

A breezy comedy-drama about a young Chinese-American lesbian trying to balance her gay lifestyle with the cultural mores of her old-country family, Saving Face has one fatal flaw among many more niggling missteps, betraying its entire premise with an unrealistically simple finale. Extremely natural newcomer Michelle Krusiec stars as Wilhemina, a gifted surgeon in her stressful first year of residency at a New York City hospital, who enters a tentative romance with a lovely ballet dancer (sweetly charming Lynn Chen) whose complete comfort with her sexuality causes problems when the relationship is tested during efforts to keep it secret from Wil's traditional family. The problem is compounded when Wil's very difficult, long-widowed mother (the always-wonderful Joan Chen, no relation to Lynn) moves in, having been kicked out of her own parents' house for being single and pregnant at the age of 48. Writer-director Alice Wu makes mother and daughter run a gauntlet of honor-bound disapproval, and gets plenty of comedic and dramatic mileage out of the journey as they slowly come to understand each other better. But the movie has a clumsy and largely conventional trajectory, and Wu seems less interested in choices and consequences than she is in sending audiences away with a smile. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Alice Wu, a 13-minute Sundance “Diary” segment, a nine-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, five deleted scenes with optional commentary (4 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a flawed film.] (R. Blackwelder)