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09/10/05
Face (2004)
52 %
Reviews Counted: 23 Fresh: 12 Rotten:11 Average Rating: 5.7/10
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Synopsis: Bertha Bay-Sa Pan's directorial debut is an ambitious drama that tells an ultimately uplifting story about the importance of family and the role it plays in shaping a child's life. Genie (Kristy Wu) is a Chinese-American teenager who has been raised by her loving grandmother. Through a... [More]
Director: Bertha Bay-Sa Pan
Screenwriter: Bertha Bay-Sa Pan, Oren Moverman
Producer: Alexa L. Fogel, Joseph Infantolino, Bertha Bay-Sa Pan
Screenwriter: Bertha Bay-Sa Pan, Oren Moverman
Producer: Alexa L. Fogel, Joseph Infantolino, Bertha Bay-Sa Pan
Reviews
The performances are almost enough to overcome the story’s essential inertness.
08/18/05
By the end of Face, we've been drawn deep into the battle for both communal support and individual freedom that marks the progress of so many ethnic groups in America.
07/29/05
With no access to these women's inner selves, we are left wanting at least a fuller portrait of their outer lives, some way to infer the meaning that the film declines to provide.
05/12/05
Ling, delicate and haunted, and Wu, a real spitfire, make their reconciliation sting as much as it soothes.
04/06/05
A film with visual flair, musical inspiration and dramatic gravity. From the top to the bottom of the cast list, there are performances rich in detail and intelligence.
03/18/05
New Jersey-born, Taiwan-raised director/cowriter Bay-Sa Pan gives the conflict a culturally particular spin and elicits strong performances from her appealing cast.
03/18/05
It's a tale worth telling again -- especially if you feel the material as strongly as recent Columbia film-school grad Bertha Bay-Sa Pan seems to.
03/18/05
A meditation on the conflict between family loyalties and personal ambition, Face ... can feel slight on a first viewing. But ... it is likely to remain in your head long afterward.
03/17/05
Top Critic
the director seems all too cognizant of her pedestrian script’s inability to express more than superficial pathos
03/16/05
Bertha Bay-Sa Pan gets good performances -- notably from Ling, who convincingly evolves from mixed-up coed to successful businesswoman.
03/04/05
There's something especially frustrating about small, personal independent movies that adhere to the stodgy conventions of small, personal, independent movies as if compelled by a cadre of militant MFA candidates.
03/03/05
Top Critic
The story's conflicts between modern and traditional attitudes, family and independence feel like familiar fodder, and the pedestrian approach fails to inject much freshness into the material.
03/03/05
Top Critic
Too slight in realization and trite in characterization to work as it might have.
02/28/05
It is the best performance of [Ling's] eclectic international career, and it raises the level of this otherwise competently made movie to something more special.
10/15/04
Face is a film of considerable charm and warmth, even if the material sometimes feels well worn.
08/26/04
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