An alternate review of Saving Face:

Another lauded AA film like Double Happiness that actually panders to eurocentric sentiments IMHO. See: http://www.westender.com/ Entertainment section, Reviewed by Martin Tsai, posted June 30, 2005 for more...

Simply put, Alice Wu's debut feature, Saving Face, is The Wedding Banquet meets Eat Drink Man Woman meets Kissing Jessica Stein. The writer/director liberally plagiarizes Ang Lee's films, appropriating elements from inane jokes about stinky tofu to the climactic surprise. Her effort also inherits essential problems of Lee's: It's basically an Asian film made for a non-Asian audience, and a lesbian film made for a heterosexual audience. More so than Lee, Wu panders to the dominant ethnic and cultural myths and exoticisms in the Western world, compartmentalizing already disenfranchised minorities into convenient and marginalized fringe segments of society.

The film features an onslaught of lazy stereotypes that...

In response to the comments above, I don't see a need to fret over the detail that an Asian American woman was with a white man. The film isn't about that. In fact, as Asian Americans, we should applaud Alice Wu for creating an intimate story about Mother to Daughter relations and about a loss of ethnic culture. Let's focus on our experiences, which are not defined by mere negativity and complaints. Instead, such experiences do include inter-racial marriages, and they do involve many complexities that form not a exclusive single dimensional identity but a broad ranging, diverse, collective. Let's not criticize anyone for their choices. We're all Asian American here. Saying that one particular experience is any better or more correct than another really shows a lack of understanding on your part of the Asian American experience"s".

I wonder, is the only way to have an 'Asian-American' film reach visibility in America, by pairing up the asian women with white men? Will they be insulting the White men who provide the funding, network, and support for the production of these films? Are the Asian Women embarrassed by the American brainwashed stereotypes of Asian men, and the false myths that haunt them? Can Asian women never be seen with an Asian man because of these? Must be, all the movies, we've seen are.

I wonder, is the only way to have an 'Asian-American' film reach visibility in America, by pairing up the asian women with white men? Will they be insulting the White men who provide the funding, network, and support for the production of these films? Are the Asian Women embarrassed by the American brainwashed stereotypes of Asian men, and the false myths that haunt them? Can Asian women never be seen with an Asian man because of these? Must be, all the movies, we've seen are.

I don't understand how one could misinterpret Asian Female Sell-out with Asian American. Why would one support Asian American movement and yet devote her life to a non-asian. In laymans terms, Asian female who marry White men, can not truly understand the Asian-American movement, and can not justify their 'sympathy' or 'pity' towards Asian-American struggle. Our plight is not to become as 'White' as we can, yet claim our identities as Asian-American. It is just full of oxymoron, contradiction, and false pretenses.

I find this movie typical of Asian females, white men, and an insult to the true Asian-AMerican crusaders.