The Wedding Banquet is a breath of fresh air
Photo by BFA / Luka Cyprian / Bleecker Street
In Ang Lee's 1993 film The Wedding Banquet, the conflict centred around Wai-Tung, a closeted Taiwanese-American man, and his sham marriage to a woman. Fashioned as a screwball comedy but sharply, sensitively observed, it wrung laughter from the awkwardness of navigating cultural and inter-generational differences. With its elaborate central bacchanal and a running joke about Wai-Tung's live-in white boyfriend secretly cooking all the food, it was an international hit. But while its farcical elements remain timeless, today, its coming out narrative feels almost quaint.
The legalisation of gay marriage, along with increased LGBT representation in pop culture, has created an opportunity to tell different, more complex queer stories. It's also an opportunity to make different jokes. In Korean-American director Andrew Ahn's deft remake, he doubles down on the original film's zany plot: in his Wedding Banquet, one half of a lesbian couple agrees to a straight marriage with the partner of her gay best friend.
The film revolves around two long-term couples, Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone), and their best friends Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-Chan). Angela and Lee are struggling to have a baby following several unsuccessful rounds of expensive IVF. Min, a wealthy art student from Korea, needs to secure his visa or else move home and take over the family business. And Chris, a PhD student with commitment issues, won't marry him. 'I am not going to be responsible for you losing your money or being disowned by your family,' he insists. So Min suggests a workaround: he will pay for his friends' IVF in exchange for a green card marriage. But when his grandmother Ja-Young (Minari's Youn Yuh-jung) gets wind that he's engaged, she arrives in Seattle and insists on a big Korean wedding.
Director Ahn and writer James Schamus (who co-wrote the original film) move the story from Nineties Manhattan to present day Seattle, updating the source material in various, amusing ways. The 1993 film took gentle jabs at yuppie culture, with an estate agent protagonist who spent all his free time at the gym. Ahn lovingly teases his own cohort; his hipster millennial ensemble include an aspiring artist with a 10-step skincare routine, a community organizer at a queer nonprofit, a literature student-turned-birdwatching guide, and my favourite, a researcher in a worm lab. The one-liners are all sharp elbows; 'Queer theory takes the joy out of being gay,' deadpans Chris of his lapsed PhD.
Yet when it comes to the supporting characters, Ahn refuses to trade in stereotypes for the sake of a gag. Min's formidable, no-nonsense grandmother is portrayed as intelligent rather than simply 'wise' while Angela's glamorous, domineering mother May (a very funny and charming Joan Chen) is not only accepting of her daughter's queerness, but an ally, glowing and sparkling with pride. 'My own daughter, marrying a man!' she gasps when she hears her news. Angela, of course, finds her 'triggering.'
Romantic comedies often focus on courtship rather than commitment, which is perhaps why films like this one, along with Tina Fey's recent TV remake of Alan Alda's The Four Seasons, feels like a breath of fresh air. The Four Seasons questions if romance and domesticity can coexist, through the prism of three middle-aged married couples. Similarly, in The Wedding Banquet, though the characters express interest in the rituals of marriage and becoming parents, there's an unwillingness to buy into those institutions wholesale. Tellingly, the film's big drunken set piece takes place at Angela's hen do, not the wedding.
Mostly, the film is lighthearted and fun, which is why it wobbles a little when trying to find its balance. Ahn treats the theme of a chosen family with earnest, weary seriousness, but the grounded dramatic performances can jar with the zippier jokes. Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) is a dab hand with both, but a sombre, too-realistic confrontation between her and Tran's Angela feels like it belongs in a different movie.
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