Today's director for Female Filmmakers is the amazing Alice Wu, a lesbian filmmaker who gave the world one of the most pivotal lesbian romantic comedies of the early 2000s with her movie Saving Face. Let's take a look at the fascinating life and career of Alice Wu.
Alice studied computer science at MIT and Stanford which made it seem like the overeducated techie would be a shining star in the tech world. She began her career in the corporate world, working for Microsoft in Seattle. She left it all behind to pursue her filmmaking dreams. In 2001, her script for Saving Face won a screenwriting award which inspired her to go forward with making the film.
Her goal was to write and make Saving Face in five years and she completed that goal. In 2004, the movie was released and it was heavily inspired by her experience coming out to her mother. The movie explores a mix of cultures as well as opening up about your sexuality. She wanted her audiences to walk away from her movie knowing that it was never too late to be yourself - just like she did when she decided to be a filmmaker!
In the movie, we follow a young American surgeon in New York City played by Michelle Krusiec. She is closeted to her mom, but she lives openly in the rest of the city. Her mom wants to set her up with a man, but she falls in love with a woman played by Lynn Chen who just so happens to be in the Chinese American community. Now it will be even harder for her to hide from her mother!
The pair go out a few times and they even have a really hot sex scene that shows breasts from both babes who suck on each other's round nipples and fondle each other's funbags. Both Michelle and Lynn are topless and tasty in this scene which shows the two of them having a wonderful time together. They are smiling, laughing, moaning, and kissing in a truly hot lesbian scene - really hot for a romantic comedy!
From there the film takes traditional romantic comedy routes which is part of what made it so alluring. Audiences in 2004 were thrilled to see all of the familiar tropes of a romantic comedy with a lesbian twist AND an Asian American twist. It's why the movie is an enduring cult classic and a triumph of 2000s indie cinema. It has a little bit of something for everyone - especially people who love watching naked Asian women kiss each other. We're the real winners here!
Alice Wu is openly gay, but she also lives a private and quiet life in San Francisco where she actually teaches and performs improv. She left the industry for a while to take care of her mother. When her mother got better, she wanted to get back into moviemaking but she was experiencing writers' block. To encourage herself to get over it, she wrote a $1,000 check to the NRA - which she hates - and gave it to a friend as a wager that if the first draft of her next script isn't written soon, she had to send this check. The script was written!
Alice Wu took almost fifteen years to return to film. She wrote and directed 2020's The Half of It which won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival. She then wrote the animated film Over the Moon which was also released in 2020. Is she back? Do we have more to expect from the lesbian Chinese filmmaker whose 2004 film is considered a queer classic? I sure hope so!
