Released in 1993, Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet was an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, but it was also a culturally significant film for its depiction of the LGBTQ community. So much so that in 2023 it was added to the Library of Congress for its cultural significance. But like all things, it could use an update for a new generation. Earlier this week at the Sundance Film Festival, a new version of The Wedding Banquet had its world premiere, led by stars Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, and Kelly Marie Tran.
Directed by Andrew Ahn (Driveways, Fire Island) and co-written by Ahn and James Schamus, The Wedding Banquet‘s plot is mostly the same although some of the characters have been tweaked. Yang plays a gay man in need of a green card, with Gladstone as the lesbian woman who marries him for the financial support. When his grandmother shows up and disrupts their plan for a secret wedding, all hilarity ensues.
Also in the cast are Han Gi-Chan, Joan Chen, and Youn Yuh-Jung. Ahn and Yang worked together previously on Fire Island. This is a chance to see the SNL star in a more dramatic role than we’ve seen before. Gladstone, best known for her Oscar-nominated performance in Killers of the Flower Moon, is also taking on a role that’s different from what we’ve seen from her thus far.
Bleecker Street will release The Wedding Banquet in theaters on April 18th.
From Director Andrew Ahn comes a joyful comedy of errors about a chosen family navigating the disasters and delights of family expectations, queerness, and cultural identity. Angela and her partner Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments, but can’t afford to pay for another round. Meanwhile their friend Min, the closeted scion of a multinational corporate empire, has plenty of family money but a soon-to-expire student visa. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF. But their plans to quietly elope are upended when Min’s skeptical grandmother flies in from Korea unannounced, insisting on an all-out wedding extravaganza.
