SAVING FACE

SAVING FACE is a small romantic comedy set in the Chinese-American culture in New York City. The story centers on Wilhelmina, a young Chinese doctor in a secret lesbian relationship who takes her widowed 48-year-old mother into her apartment to live when the mother becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Wilhelmina’s patriarchal, old-fashioned grandfather has disinherited her mother. The mother is also shunned by her gossiping friends, but she refuses to tell anyone who the father of her baby is.

Despite the lesbian affair with Vivian, a dancer who has applied for the Paris ballet, Wilhelmina is reluctant to being seen with Vivian in public. When the Paris ballet offers Vivian a job, both Vivian and Wilhelmina have a decision to make. Meanwhile, the secret of the mother’s own lover is revealed.

SAVING FACE has a very strong Romantic worldview with a very strong feminist outlook. Traditional Chinese society, which correctly shuns premarital sex and homosexuality, is seen as rigid and harsh. Of course, the movie also has a very strong pro-homosexual worldview as well. These worldviews are abhorrent, as are the movie’s nude lesbian sex scene and its one strong profanity and two uses of an “f” word. On a positive note, the mother decides to keep her baby rather than abort it, and the movie does not attack her decision.

It is important to note that the director of this radical left-wing movie, Alice Wu, is quoted as saying, “I rarely see the world in terms of good and evil, right or wrong; I think most people strive to do the right thing.” Miss Wu’s statements are logically self-contradictory. She claims that she rarely sees the world in terms of right or wrong, yet she also says that “most people strive to do the right thing,” whatever that means. Also, although the Romantic worldview she expresses in her movie strongly views traditional Chinese society as mostly wrong, Miss Wu herself seems confused about what she believes. Of course, like Miss Wu’s personal beliefs stated above, a Romantic worldview sees human nature as basically good, rather than sinful as God teaches in the Bible. Rampant immorality and rejection of Christianity begins with adopting false, incoherent worldviews and beliefs like these. That’s why MOVIEGUIDE®’s use of worldview analysis can be the first step toward spiritual, intellectual, philosophical, psychological, moral, mental, and emotional clarity, and the first step to media wisdom. Reading and studying the Bible doesn’t hurt either. In fact, it can lead to eternal salvation for anyone who takes it seriously.