Their romance is far from perfect, and its development is stymied by Wil’s busy work schedule and role as her mother’s newfound caretaker.
Vivian, in many ways, symbolizes Wil’s liberated potential, although Wil is hesitant at almost every turn in the relationship to showcase a deeper commitment to her. Meanwhile, Wil starts dating Vivian (Lynn Chen), a dancer and the daughter of Wil’s boss, but struggles to be publicly affectionate with her. Hwei-Lan refuses to reveal the identity of the man who fathered the child, enraging her father, who finds it unacceptable that his 48-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. She learns that Hwei-Lan was kicked out by Wil’s grandparents because she is pregnant. After work one night, Wil finds her mom sitting alone in front of her Manhattan apartment. She frequently rebuffs her mother’s efforts to set her up with young Chinese men. Wil is a young and successful surgeon, who has yet to come out as publicly gay to her family. Wil (Michelle Krusiec) and her widowed mother Hwei-Lan (Joan Chen) privately worry that their choices will disappoint and dishonor their family - hence the overarching theme of “saving face.” They live in fear of ostracization from their tight-knit Chinese community in Flushing, Queens, even if abiding by certain cultural norms and expectations comes at the expense of their own individual desires. Saving Face, a 2004 romantic dramedy, features a Chinese American mother-daughter duo who are, unbeknownst to each other, each reckoning with an illicit romantic relationship. In the early 2000s, however, when Asian American films were few and far between, Alice Wu’s pioneering Saving Face attempted to give equal weight to the foibles and fantasies of both mother and daughter. Turning Red and Everything Everywhere All At Once are the two most recent films that exemplify this shift.
There is enough conflict and contention to drive the story forward, but room is left for reconciliation and filial acceptance. Over the past decade, these narratives have evolved into something much more nuanced and forgiving. The diaspora’s identity, in many ways, exists in stark contrast to that of our first-generation mothers, even in a show like Gilmore Girls. Stories of maternal legacy have long dominated the Asian American cinematic oeuvre, since The Joy Luck Club over two decades ago. It didn’t help that Amy Chua’s 2011 book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother gave a racialized name to this aggressive style of parenting: the tiger mom. In hindsight, the depiction was merciless in its othering mockery of Asian immigrant parenting, positioned in stark contrast to Lorelai’s casual, cool-mom demeanor. She wasn’t allowed to go out with friends and couldn’t publicly date boys, not in the way Rory could. Kim was, to put it bluntly, the antagonist of her daughter’s life. Kim, the strict, overbearing, religious mother of Rory’s best friend Lane, shook my 11-year-old self to her core. I’m aware of the irony, but the portrayal of Mrs. The first depiction of an Asian American mother-daughter relationship I saw on-screen was in Gilmore Girls.