Modern people may be blessed. In addition to new ideas, they are more tolerant of everyone's self-life style and self-selection. The addition of the internet and blog has allowed people to have more channels for communication and venting, instead of just limited to In the pursuit of confidants, people can choose to be one self in front of people and another behind them; online is one self, and offline is another. I don't understand, it's okay, I'm flashing, in a corner of the world, there are always people who understand, there is no need to go to the front.
About this film, I don't want to say more, the director's note on the official website is the best comment:
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I am fascinated by human ineptitude. I rarely see the world in terms of good and evil, right or wrong; I think most people strive to do the right thing. That the "right thing" is so often wrong is uncanny, some times tragic , and often very, very funny. My favorite stories arise from good-but-flawed characters trying desperately to do what each believes is best for a given situation--and the situation keeps getting worse. The characters don't find any of this funny; we as the audience laugh out of recognition--in their boat, we might do (and perhaps have done) worse.
What interests me is our capacity to see this, yet make those same mistakes regardless. It is funny that a species so capable -- our biology outpaces our circumstances such that the vast majority of us are physically and intellectually far more agile than our daily work requires -- is so lost when it comes to emotions, to relationships with one another. On the chain of evolution, from fish to ape to us, we are the geek with glasses who can't ask out the girl. Prior species were wiped out from famine and disease; we might be the first to be felled by poor self-esteem.
There is a moment in SAVING FACE when the daughter sees her mother's vulnerability for the first time. The mother has staunchly refused to go on the blind date her daughter has procured. The daughter responds by trying to railroad the mother into getting ready; she is certain the situation can be fixed by getting Mom into right dress, the right hair. The more the daughter tries to fix things, the worse it gets. What her mother secretly wants is reassurance: She's scared. The situation is comic. Does the daughter care? Yes. Is she trying to do the right thing? Certainly. Does it work? No. It is only when she throws up the hands and surrenders, does the truth come out. And with it, the connection both women have been subconsciously seeking.
I wrote SAVING FACE as a love-letter to my mother. The character of Ma begins the movie as a woman with all major decisions in life seemingly made; at 48, she has lived a proper life and is now essentially just living to die. That she ultimately breaks with tradition and lives on her own terms is a triumph I wanted my mother-- and the world -- to see. I suppose if there is one thing I am trying to say with the film, it is that no matter who you are -- Asian or black, gay or straight, young or old -- that everyone basically wants to love --and that love can start at any point in your life that you want it to. I made SAVING FACE because I wanted my mother to know that it was never too late to fall in love for the first time, And that it is not by doing things right, but by sometimes getting them wrong,that we launch the journey that allows us to come into out own.
-Alice Wu
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