'The Wedding Banquet is not the gay rom-com you think it is'

Yahoo

28-03-2025

In an age of endless remakes, it's telling that most Hollywood rehashes are straight. Aside from The Lion King, a veritable Queen of the Jungle, re-do's of gay classics are few and far between. Maybe that's because most of these gay classics can't be topped, so to speak. So with that in mind, I approached news of Andrew Ahn's The Wedding Banquet remake — this year's BFI Flare opener — with a mix of excitement and trepidation.
Ang Lee's 1993 original was a bonafide feast of a film, a groundbreaking, Oscar nominated classic that centred Asian queerness and bisexuality at a time when gay marriage wasn't even a thing. Kind of like now too, if conservatives soon get their way.
But times have changed, mostly for the better, which means a straight-forward remake of The Wedding Banquet wouldn't quite make sense. That's something Ahn is clearly aware of in his new version, which he just so happened to co-write with the original co-scripter, James Schamus.
In the original, a bisexual Taiwanese guy named Gao Wai-Tung marries a Chinese woman Wei-Wei to help her secure a green card and get his parents off his back. What could go wrong? A lot, it turns out, because when said parents suddenly come to town, excited to plan this very straight wedding, Wai-Tung is forced to hide his gay partner, a Jewish guy named Simon. Cue hilarious hijinks and a whole lot of drama.
The gays love drama, of course, but to update The Wedding Banquet for 2025 a very different kind of drama was needed to keep things relevant and appeal to modern audiences. Because we have seen a lot since 1993, not least in Ang Lee's own Brokeback Mountain where two cowboys pitched a tent together (plus so much more). And that was twenty years ago.
It's clear from the get-go that The Wedding Banquet is immediately more queer this time around, which is exactly what you would expect and hope for. We first meet Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and her girlfriend Lee (Lily Gladstone) at a LGBTQ+ event in Seattle where Angela's mum, played by Joan Chen, is receiving an Ally Award. Chen is somehow gayer than the actual lesbian couple at the heart of this film because no one mothers harder than she does. Don't trust anyone who might say otherwise.
Angela and Lee are trying but struggling to get pregnant using IVF, but thankfully, they have two emotional support gays living in their garage, a couple named Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-Chan). Things aren't going too well for them either after Min proposes to Chris and he freaks out in response. You might be wondering why he would turn down such a sweet, handsome guy. Did he hit his head? Did he swap bodies with his dad, Freaky Friday-style? No, Chris has attachment issues, like every other gay man who's ever existed.
Ok, it doesn't help that Min's student visa is about to expire and that his rich gran (Youn Yuh-jung) wants him to head up the family business in Korea. But Min isn't just in it for a green card. He really loves Chris. But Chris is pissed off when Min decides to propose to Angela instead, offering to pay for Lee's IVF in return for citizenship.
Why didn't the otherwise sweet, thoughtful, Min just give them the money they so sorely need anyway beforehand, no strings attached? Rom-coms are not to be questioned. They are to be enjoyed in all their fun, frothy glory with Maltesers and wine in hand. Except, The Wedding Banquet delves into so much more than you might expect from a film in this genre.
The issue is Min's grandmother has decided to pay her son and his fiancée a surprise visit, so they have mere hours to clear the house of anything gay and stop her from finding out the truth. It's mayhem, but not literally, because Gaga's new album would be a huge giveaway. DVDs, posters, books, anything that could be read as queer is immediately removed. Kind of like how corporate brands scrub away support for the gays in their advertising one day after Pride Month.
The film sets this conflict up to be the driving force from this point on, this need to hide Min and Chris's sexuality from Min's nan (or halmeoni). It's how the original film went, so why not follow in those footsteps again? The problem is that modern audiences have moved past the need to watch proud gay men closet themselves in 2025, and thankfully, so have the writers of this film because Ja-Young clocks her grandson almost immediately.
To be fair, the fetus Angela and Lee are trying to bring into this world could have clocked him too, but still, this twist is a smart turn that works especially well for fans of the original film who might have expected something different. Instead of closeting themselves to trick and appease a visiting elder, Chris, Min, Angela and Lee soon end up working alongside Ja-Young to get everything they want and trick her homophobic husband in the process.
From that point on, this new version of The Wedding Banquet really comes into its own by opening the story up and giving space to conversations around queerness and acceptance that were much harder to come by in 1993.
Min and Ja-Young share what is — in my opinion — the most moving scene in the entire film when Youn Yuh-jung's matriarch finds unexpected common ground with her grandson.
"I married someone I didn't love," she says, speaking to the pressures that women of her generation faced to be with who they "should" be with rather than who they actually wanted to be with. "I hope you can love who you want because I couldn't. This is my wedding gift to you." I'm not crying. YOU'RE crying.
Seeing Min and his grandmother connect across generations because of, and not despite his queerness, is nothing short of revolutionary. And this is echoed too in a scene where Angela and her mother, May Chen, talk through their own rollercoaster journey that's been marked by intense phases of rejection as well as acceptance (which is overbearing in its own way too).
In short, The Wedding Banquet is not the frothy gay rom-com you might have expected from a Hollywood remake of this scale, and that's true whether you've come to it from watching the trailers or are just a fan of the original. Daring to tackle a classic and pulling it off is one thing, but doing so with what feels like such ease is another matter entirely.
Ahn's take on The Wedding Banquet is a feast to be treasured, and to say more would spoil the biggest event of the season for anyone who was best friends with their English teacher in school.
The Wedding Banquet will be released in UK cinemas on Friday, 9 May.