In 1993, Ang Lee released his second film, The Wedding Banquet. It followed a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant who, while in a relationship with a white gay man, placates his parents by marrying a Chinese woman to help her get a green card. Of course, his plan of hiding his sexuality goes awry especially when a pregnancy enters the picture. Progressive for the time, the film was considered a classic by the LGBTQ community and remains one of the first mainstream films that authentically focused on race and sexuality and was nominated for major awards.
Filmmaker Andrew Ahn hopes to continue this legacy with his complete revamp of the story, co-written with the original screenwriter James Schamus. Instead of a bisexual man, he splits the role between Angela, a scientist (Kelly Marie Tran), and Chris (Bowen Yang) a birder who put grad school on hold. Angela is dating Lee (Lily Gladstone), an LGBTQ advocate and the two are living together in the latter’s childhood home and trying for a baby via IVF.
Living in their renovated shed are Chris and his partner Min (Han Gi-Chan), an artist who works with textiles and comes from a South Korean corporate empire. The two have been together for five years, and while Min wants more of a commitment, Chris is unable to give it due to his own insecurities.
When Min’s grandmother tries to pull him into the family business, he strikes up a plan to marry Angela. His own proposal to Chris failed, and this way, he could pay for Lee and Angela’s IVF, so why not enter a traditional straight marriage to solve their problems?
It’s really nice to see Lily Gladstone in something light and breezy. While her character doesn’t get much to do in the film’s second half, hopefully, this will bring more comedic work her way. Yang is hilarious but struggles in The Wedding Banquet’s more serious moments. Gi-Chan is a comedic force, bouncing around the screen like a puppy dog and nailing his delivery. Tran has a harder job with most of the emotional beats landing on her shoulders. She nails it, but out of the group she is given the most to do.
Outshining the core four are outstanding performances from Joan Chen (last year’s Dídi) and Youn Yuh-jung (Oscar-winner for Minari). Chen plays Tran’s overly supportive mother, a beacon of performative allyship, which she uses to ease her guilt about going no contact when her daughter comes out. She’s not only hilarious but inserts layers of personal satisfaction and remorse in her performance. Youn Yuh-jung is just as good. Her dry sense of humor balances out the zappy one-liners and comedic earnestness of the rest of the cast. As the matriarch of Min’s family, her demands drive the narrative but there’s a compassionate level of understanding that she infuses in later scenes that are a joy to watch.
Ahn made three features before this. The first two Spa Night and Driveways followed young Asian American boys as they came of age. Granted his first was a lot grittier than his second and neither were comedies, but when Fire Island came out in 2022 with a biting and hilarious script based on Pride and Prejudice from star Joel Kim Booster and Ahn nailed the tone, it made sense he was asked to revamp The Wedding Banquet. The dialogue is snappy and Ahn never misses a laugh. However, he is always aware of where his characters are on their journey and knows to never sacrifice that for a joke. The 2025 version of The Wedding Banquet feels like a marriage between all of Ahn’s films, at times quiet, others hilarious, but 100% aware of the message it is sending. We’ve come a long way narratively in 30-plus years. It’s so refreshing to see Chinese, Korean, and Indigenous queer people onscreen, played and written by the same demographics they are representing.
The Wedding Banquet premiered at Sundance and will be distributed by Bleecker Street. It will be released on April 18th.
