[2] The film focuses on Wilhelmina, a young Chinese American surgeon; her unwed, pregnant mother; and her dancer girlfriend.

Wil comes home to discover her mother has been kicked out by her grandfather for being pregnant out of wedlock, bringing shame to the family.

Alice Wu, who directed the movie, wrote the script several years earlier while working as a program manager at Cinemania and Music Central, Microsoft's CD-ROM entertainment department.

[Wu] want[ed] her to leave the theater feeling that sense of hope.”[5] She has also explained that although she has a lot in common with Wil,[6] the situation of the film is not based on her life.

[3] Alice Wu later realized that her novel would be a better fit for a movie and drafted the first script in three days during a 12-week screen writing class at the University of Washington.

As advised by her instructor, Wu gave herself five years to make the movie, quitting her Microsoft job,[3] moving to New York,[5] and taking a filmmaking class taught by Alan Oxman.

[3] In 2002, Wu submitted her script for Saving Face to a contest sponsored by the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment and won.

The studio then tried to compromise and asked to make the love interest white so that a star like Scarlett Johansson could bring more attention to the film.

Despite further proposals for script changes, Wu maintained that the Mandarin dialogue, lesbian romance, and her involvement as both writer and director were non-negotiable.

[4] She felt the film needed to be bilingual in order to make it authentic and believable and thus met with over one thousand actors before finding the right cast.

[4] Wu also experienced an issue in casting one of the main roles because the actor was stuck in China due to visa problems; therefore, she had to use her second choice, who was in the United States.

[9] At her first audition, Lynn Chen played Vivian simply as a friend of Wil's in the vending machine scene because she did not have access to the script and was therefore unaware that it was a lesbian romantic comedy.

The production team came across budgetary issues when Wu insisted that they include landscape shots of New York to ground the film in its environment.

[15] Holden's overall positive review noted that the film had failings at the end: "Sadly, as "Saving Face" ties up the strands of its story, it forfeits its credibility at a wedding finale with a series of instant feel-good solutions and reconciliations.

"[15] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly praised the movie’s interesting storyline and twists but stated that “the writer-director, Alice Wu, fudges a lot of the basics — I never believed the heroine was really a physician”.

[18] David Rooney of Variety Media said that the film excelled at “spanning the fragile bridge between traditional values and independent spirit” and providing “gentle humor and [a] universal emotional experience”.

[29] At the start of the movie, Wil is guarded, focused on work and juggling her life as a lesbian in the city and a dutiful daughter in the Chinese community in Flushing, Queens.

By falling in love with Wil and wanting her to be open about their relationship, Vivian gave her the confidence to come out to her mother and her community.

[30] Furthermore, the film briefly addresses the issue of anti-Black racism in Asian communities when Ma insisted that Jay, Wil's African American neighbour use paper plates because it is "safer."

Wil's mother sees the impossibility of accepting her daughter's sexuality because she believes it is based on a “bad ideology”[29] on top of it negatively affecting her reputation (face).

[31] Saving Face references mainstream Chinese American movies such as The Joy Luck Club, The Last Emperor, and Maid in Manhattan in the scene when Ma goes to the video store.

There, she examines porn movies that stereotype Asian women as docile, the “China Doll” and “Dragon lady” who are all sexual objects for the Western white male gaze.

She decides to marry a man that she does not love in order to please her father and regain her family's honour while also setting Wil up with men even though she already knew that she was interested in women.

[29] Moreover, Ma's character defies norms despite this emphasis on filial piety: she is autonomous as she is pregnant, explores the city alone, and rents a porn DVD.

[29] The heteronormativity of the Chinese Flushing community is first displayed during the first dance hall scene when the shots alternate between those of men and women.

My daughter is not gay”, relating homosexuality to a “bad ideology” that could not have come from Ma's traditional Chinese teachings and must therefore originate in Wil's Americanization.

[31] Yet at the end of the movie, this dichotomy between men and women at the dancehall is no longer present, and Wil and Vivian's kiss symbolize the breaking of this binary.

[29] While some of the partygoers leave, rejecting the inclusion of homosexual people in their community, others stay, including Wil's mother and grandfather.

[9] Lynn Chen also praised Alice Wu for her skill at directing and commanding the set and realized that she has not had as much of a special opportunity since filming Saving Face.