Alice Wu's "Saving Face" is breezy to a fault, exploring same-sex romance and Chinese traditionalism in a way that's warm, buoyant and instantly forgettable.

Making her feature writing and directing debut, Wu sticks to well-mapped terrain in telling the story of Wilhelmina (Michelle Krusiec), a brilliant young Chinese-American surgeon living in Manhattan amid a complex support system of relatives, family friends and chatty Chinese dowagers who trade gossip like baseball cards. As the stunning if boyish Wil, Krusiec has the look of somebody fighting a constant mild state of indigestion — it's a performance that inspires our sympathy, if only because the poor girl seems in dire need of a Tums.

Not surprisingly, Wil's internal discomfort stems from a shameful personal secret: She's gay. Despite her preference for button-down oxfords and comfortable shoes ("I had a pair like those during the Revolution," her grandmother observes), none of Wil's family guesses that she's into girls. But we do, especially when she trades meaningful looks with Vivian (Lynn Chen), a toe-curling knockout with the City Ballet who shamelessly pursues Wil like a loan shark chasing a debt.

Their subsequent love affair runs into trouble when Wil's widowed, 48-year-old mother (Joan Chen from "Twin Peaks") gets pregnant by parties unknown and comes to live in her apartment. Joan Chen is marvelous as the testy, traditional mother, whose own father (Jim Wang) bitterly disapproves of her pregnancy. It's the old man's conservative, status-minded Chinese shadow that looms over Wil and her mother and forestalls their complete, comfortable transition to a new culture. "You've thrown away a lifetime of my face!" the grandfather wails, betraying a rigid value system even more deeply rooted than his fatherly love.

Essentially, Wu has created a perkier, estrogen-infused version of Ang Lee's "The Wedding Banquet," albeit one that shies from genuine conflict, contains some awkward dialogue and offers a rose-hued resolution that seems facile and ill-gained. Wu has a formula and sticks to it.

And why does everybody have to be so bloody likeable? For all their sweetness, Wil and Vivian lack the craggy texture of real souls.

Subsequently, Wu offers us the impossible: A love scene involving two beautiful women that's distressingly, unmistakably unsexy.

´Saving Face´
Starring: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen
Rating: R (some sexuality and crude language) Running time: 91 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday at Harkins Camelview in Scottsdale.