Resting a contemporary queer comedy on a marriage of convenience might seem dated. But by updating Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, Andrew Ahn transforms this motif inherited from the 1990s into a very current mirror of questions of couplehood, kinship, and chosen family.
In 1993, The Wedding Banquet, directed by Ang Lee ( The Secret of Brokeback Mountain, Sense and Sensibility, Hulk), told the story of a young gay Taiwanese American man who organized a marriage of convenience to reassure his family. A joyful, generous, and very modern comedy at a time when masculine homosexuality was still rarely portrayed on screen as a normal part of life. More than thirty years later, Andrew Ahn, known for Fire Island, revisits in The Wedding Banquet, which has just been released on VOD, the motifs of the original film to move them toward a contemporary queer generation.
Min, of Korean origin and from a very wealthy family, sees his student visa expire while his grandmother, played by the brilliant Youn Yuh-jung (Minari, Pachinko), presses him to return to Seoul. Eager to stay in the United States, he initially proposes marriage to his partner Chris, played by Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live, Wicked, Fire Island), who refuses. He then turns to Angela, his lesbian best friend, in exchange for funding the next round of assisted reproduction for his partner, Lee (Lily Gladstone, seen in Killers of the Flower Moon). Things become complicated when Min’s grandmother arrives unannounced…
Good Surprises
That’s where the comedy becomes deft: where one might expect a clash of cultures, a rigidity of family, and crude homophobia, one instead encounters a generosity and breadth of spirit as gentle as it is welcome. It’s rather in the relationships among the four thirty-somethings that the film, often very funny, finds its dramatic ground and its footing in the milieu of the 2020s.
Couplehood, the importance of chosen family, (co-)parenting, The Wedding Banquet tackles with intelligence and sensitivity themes that are very current for queer young adults—who sometimes appear more narrow-minded than their elders. Andrew Ahn thus never yields to easy solutions and offers a bittersweet film that shines with a meticulously crafted cast, finely etched dialogues, and a portrayal full of acuity of a LGBT+ generation caught between heritage and the desires for emancipation. An excellent surprise!
