Falling For Grace

Falling for Grace is a romantic comedy directed by Asian American director Fay Ann Lee in 2007. The film first appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 as the original title East Broadway. Fay Ann Lee also plays the role of the lead female in the film Grace Tang. She had this vision as a director to make the first successful mainstream romantic comedy with an Asian woman leading the mix. In doing so, the film doesn't bring up any race issues. If anything, it's a classic story about an educated, hard-working woman from lower middle-class parents who still yearns for social acceptance among the Upper East Side elite.

Grace Tang is a successful investment banker who was raised in Chinatown. She dreams of living among the social elites in New York City. One day she is accidentally mistaken for an heiress from Hong Kong, also named Grace Tang. She is invited to a party where she falls in love with a lawyer named Andrew James Barrington, Jr who is dating committee-member Kay Douglas. Grace hides her true identity from him, but he also has a few secrets he keeps from her. 

Grace and Andrew begin to see more of each other, but her families interests become a conflict. Andrew happens to be the son of a prominent attorney who works in the NY State Attorney General's office in Manhattan. He has been pursuing a case against a network of Chinatown sweatshops, which happens to be the one Grace's mother works. Grace ends up lying saying that her parents are an old couple whom she visits as a volunteer and she eventually finds herself in the middle not knowing what to do. Her brother Ming ends up telling the truth to Andrew and he leaves the romance, which Kay is unaware of. The film concludes when Andrew leaves Kay to move to Hong Kong, where Grace has a new position with her company.

Falling For Grace is a delightful film that is fun to watch. It’s an entertaining alternative to a $100 million movie that stinks and draws so much attention. What I love about it, is that it has two main characters who fall in love, the female is Asian and the male is a white man. In my opinion, this is a cute mother daughter film but can also appeal to a broader audience.