Image Out Comes to an End

At 9:30pm last night Aviva and I went to our seventh and final film of Rochester's Image Out film festival, Saving Face, a movie that explores the workings of a tight-knit Chinese-American community and one family's fiercely guarded secrets: the daughter, Wil, is a lesbian, the 48-year-old mother is pregnant by an unknown father, and the grandfather sees both women as disgraces to the family name. Directed and written by Alice Wu, Saving Face proved to be a great way to end this year's festival. Part of my motivation for going to see this film stemmed from a brief encounter I had with the director about two years ago when I attended a July 4th barbecue in Brooklyn. Her excitement about the film, which hadn't yet gone into production, was positively contagious and I thought it'd be fun to check out the finished product. I wasn't disappointed. The frequent laughter, audible clucks and sighs coming from the large crowd testified to the film's ability to elicit a complex range of emotions from its spectators, no small feet for a film that's been billed as a "heart-warming romantic comedy."

Which brings me to a discussion Aviva and I had yesterday. I made some disparaging remark about comedy and Aviva asked whether I thought comedies could ever be truly brilliant. "Of course they can," I protested. I explained my tendency to disparage comedy in this manner: when it comes to comedy, there seems to be a much lower standard and, because the reams of mediocre comedy on film and television have set the bar so low, I've stopped thinking about the genre in genuinely critical terms. Why bother? Just enjoy it for what it is--entertainment with about as much substance as cotton candy. If I try to think about it critically, I'll only end up annoyed and disappointed.

Though I entered the theatre expecting a breezy comedy that would leave me with a smile on my face, Wu's film did give me plenty to think about critically. In fact, it contained many genuinely brilliant moments, and only a few disappointing ones. And even these "failures" might have gone unnoticed in a lesser film. Certainly, the ending of the film is too idyllic and stretches the boundaries of believability with it's tidy and universally happy series of resolutions. The young lesbians are reunited after a short separation that allows Wil to become more comfortable with her sexual orientation; the mother learns to stop trying to please her father, regains the respect of her community and establishes her independence from her lover; the crotchety grandfather continues to be crotchety but will at least eat a meal with his lesbian granddaughter and her lover, and his pregnant middle-aged daughter and her twenty-something lover. Although these conclusions did gloss over the intricate complexities the film had worked very hard to establish. Yet, I expected, and couldn't help but want, this emotionally satisfying conclusion. Saving Face employs skillful cinematography, particularly where it explores the city and the distinct borough of Queens. The film's tendency to pan slowly across New York's distinctive architecture supplements Wil's emotional and physical diminutiveness, while contrasting sharply with her nervousness. Other characters' varying moods, particularly Ma's, come across loud and clear though a strong combination of colours and off-kilter camera angles that read like revealing, and often surprising, personality traits. Although having Joan Chen in the cast certainly helped elevate the quality of the acting, I was also impressed by the film's many relatively inexperienced actors. Perhaps I found Saving Face's conclusion particularly satisfying given that it helped alleviate some of the residual pain from the film we'd seen earlier in the day--Unveiled, an incredible Iranian-German production that left me feeling quite despondent and angry. A little bit of levity was exactly what I needed to round out my Saturday night.