Sexuality and race in Saving face

She wrote the script a number of years before it was finally produced. The title of the movie is of great significance in this movie. The phrase "saving face" refers to the act of maintaining a certain sense of dignity when faced with bad situations or simply when things go wrong so that one does not look bad in the eyes of other people. The plot of this movie is built around its title whereby the lead characters Wil and Goa are trying to save their faces. Wil played by Michelle Krusiec, the daughter and also the lead character is a closeted surgeon who is having a secret love affair with another woman and Goa played by Joan Chen, the mother has gotten pregnant outside marriage and she does not want to reveal who the father is.

In many scenes when the two women are together, we either see Wil's back and Vivian's face or Vivian's face and Wil's body and the fact that we are not able to see Wil's face is a clear indication of her guilt of being a lesbian. She is figuratively and literally saving face. This is the impulse that also stops her from declaring publicly her love for Vivian (Hood, 2015). Wil genuinely loves Vivian, although we hear her confessing to her African American friend that she is a lesbian, she does not mention anything to her mother. She goes ahead to tell her friend about the time when her mother caught her in the act with a girl and her mother, instead of reacting she decided to pretend she had not seen anything since she knew of the consequences if she confronted her regarding the same.

In the past century, many of the Chinese have grown and lived by the rules set by Mao on how the people of China should leave. For example, according to Mao, a woman is not expected to get pregnant outside of wedlock, young people are not allowed to engage in sex before marriage. Same sex relationships are completely unheard of and young people are expected to stay with their parent (Neumeier, 2013). This race has lived under this rules and everyone has tried to save face whenever he or she felt like he or she were doing the contrary. This culture has stayed with the people and even followed those who have gone to other countries to try out a new life.

The society expects Wil to get herself a nice young man and settle down as soon as possible. This is emphasized when her mother tries to set her up with young Chinese men who were eager to know her and settle. However, Ma's efforts do not bear any fruit since Wil does not show any interest in any of the men. Wil defies the way of living of the people of her race and decides to have an affair with Vivian who is a dancer. For the Chinese, same-sex relationships are not allowed and it is for this reason that Wil is ashamed of her relationship with Vivian and she is not ready to go public about the same because people from her race will not approve of it.