In Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet” — a queer reimagining of Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same name — is proof that sometimes a movie just needs a great cast and a good heart to carry it through. Ahn, as a director, knows how to balance sweet and sincere emotions with farcical comedic elements without ever letting a film’s tone get confused in the mix.
The director’s previous film “Fire Island” was a heartfelt tale of friendship that offered some laugh-out-loud moments (thanks to an impression of Marisa Tomei’s character in “My Cousin Vinny”) and his 2020 film “Driveways,” about an unlikely friendship between a young boy and his elderly next door neighbor, was one of that year’s best films. Ahn’s plots tend to be about community and friendship, sometimes in places where it’s least expected.
He continues that with “The Wedding Banquet,” which centers on two couples: Min (Han Gi-Chan) and his boyfriend, Chris (Bowen Yang) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and her girlfriend, Lee (Lily Gladstone). Min is under a great deal of pressure to appease his strict, traditional grandmother, while Lee is undergoing IVF treatments to have a baby with Angela. The most recent attempt didn’t work, leaving Lee completely heartbroken.
Min wants to marry Chris and even proposes to him, but Chris isn’t ready for a commitment that will upend Min’s relationship with his family. Min needs a green card to stay in Seattle, so he makes another proposal — Angela and Min will get married to appease his grandmother, and he will give the family money he receieves to Angela and Lee for their next round of IVF treatments. Min tells his grandmother (Youn Yuh-Jung, who won an Oscar for 2020’s “Minari”) he is getting married and she unexpectedly travels from Korea for the wedding. A comedy of errors ensues when Min’s grandmother quickly realizes the actual plan at hand.
“The Wedding Banquet” follows a familiar comedy of errors trajectory, but more than making a broad comedy, Ahn’s objective is to spotlight queer couples and illustrate the hardships they experience simply by existing as their authentic selves. From the pressure of cultural traditions and IVF treatments to Angela’s overly zealous, while accepting, mother (Joan Chen, who was wonderful in last year’s “DiDi”), “The Wedding Banquet” shows an unfair exhaustion in just living as a queer person.
The movie is successful largely due to the cast. Each couple has great chemistry, particularly Gladstone and Tran’s characters. Gladstone may get the least attention from the main quartet, but she’s an expert performer in making the smallest moments count. Since Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 film “Certain Women” put her on the radar and then her Oscar-nominated turn in Martin Scorsese’s 2023 “Killers of the Flower Moon” elevated her status, she has consistently proven to be an actor with the enviable talent to convey much without saying anything. Her heartbreak in Lee’s IVF journey is the film’s wounded heart.
“The Wedding Banquet” does start to feel a bit stretched out in the final act, especially when a fairly predictable twist is introduced for the sake of creating drama. It feels like a screenplay mechanism to elicit shock, which the movie doesn’t really need. The real heart of “The Wedding Banquet” is watching the characters find joy within their lives and overcome the obstacles in their way.
Matt Passantino is a contributor to CITY.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
