Movie Recommendation

[morgan_dhu]

Well, it didn't get any Academy Award nominations, but the other night I saw a really good movie: Saving Face. I understand it made somewhat of a name for itself at the Sundance and Toronto International Film Festivals, and deservedly so.

The focal characters are Wil, a single, Chinese-American woman who is a doctor and a closeted lesbian and her mother, a widow who has lived her life exclusively within the Chinese community. The film revolves around their relationships with each other, and with the members of their family and community - including an aspiring dancer, Vivien, who seems determined to get Wil out of the closet and into her life.

Delightful story with several quite unexpected plot developments, well acted, with several relative newcomers and the divine Joan Chen playing the part of Wil's mother, with powerful but subtle direction from Alice Wu, who also wrote the script. And lots of fun.

Comments

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

I'm not much of a film buff, but I'll ask around and have a think. Meanwhile:

Many years ago I saw a delightful short film on television called 'Domestic Bliss'. I've never forgotten it. A gentle and truthful comedy about two lesbians in love moving in together, when one of them has a child. It's still one of the few movies that has ever seemed to reflect my own life in any way. There's some info about it here (http://www.buddybuddy.com/mr-video.html). But I think it may be hard to get hold of. It doesn't seem to be in the catalogue of the site behind the link, anyway. I see, checking on the web, that the director, Joy Chamberlain, also directed a film called 'Nocturne' in 1990; I should think that would probably be worth watching, too.

The television movie 'Portrait of a Marriage', supposedly about Vita Sackville-West, is very bad, I think. (But then, I hated 'Tipping the Velvet'.)

Then there is the famous period piece 'The Killing of Sister George' (1968). I remember, as a half-comprehending schoolkid, seeing the suggestive posters for that plastered all over the Underground. But I didn't get to see it until some years later, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently, nothing by Joy Chamberlain is available on video over here - that's often the way it is with shorter films, alas.

I thought 'Tipping the Velvet' was alright, but not sensational - and there was a great deal about 'Fingersmith' that bothered me. Although there's something that just lifts my heart a little bit at seeing two women survive a piece of film art in order to live, possibly together, possibly happily, possibly forever after.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

How odd. This was me. LJ plays games with our minds, apparently.