012 - The Films of Alice Wu

Alice Wu began her career in software, but pivoted into screenwriting and directing in the late 90s. Her first film was a semi-autobiographic movie called Saving Face which she spent 5 years developing before it premiered at Toronto Film Festival in 2004. This brilliant film stars Michelle Krusiec as Wilhelmina 'Wil' Pang, a lesbian Chinese-American surgeon in New York City. Her identities as a gay woman, a Chinese-American in New York, and a devoted daughter to Ma, delicately played by Joan Chen, come into conflict when she falls for Vivian, played by Lynn Chen. This film deals with themes close to director Alice Wu's heart and navigates a tight-knit traditional community reckoning with its own notions of "saving face."  While Wu's film was warmly received by critics and had a solid distribution from Sony Pictures, she did not go on to make another movie for almost two decades. Her follow-up film, which came to Netflix in 2020, is The Half of It, starring Leah Lewis as Ellie Chen, a graduating senior juggling her ambitions for college, the multiple jobs she takes on to support her father, and her identity as a queer woman. This movie takes a fun spin on the story of Cyrano de Bergerac when Ellie begins texting Aster on behalf of the lovable jock, Paul.  Both of Alice Wu's films are tender yet amusing views into the intersectionality of Asian-American queer women, and Jake and Kevin recommend watching both! Why did Alice Wu take off so much time between these two movies, and why do we not see more films from her being produced? What is a himbo, really? Where is the change.org petition to get Joan Chen in more movies? These and more are (sort of) answered in this week's episode of Cinema Very Gay! In an...upsetting continuation of our miniseries on the Eating Out Cinematic Universe, we also spend some time digging into what went wrong with the third installment in the series, Eating Out: All You Can Eat. Neither as funny nor as titillating as the previous installment, has this series already peaked? Jim Verraros, we miss you!