In a cinema landscape full of tired and unnecessary remakes, reboots and sequels, Andrew Ahn’s heartfelt rom-com “The Wedding Banquet” delivers a fresh take on the beloved story from the original 1993 film of the same name. “The Wedding Banquet” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in late January before its theatrical release on April 18.
The original film follows Wai-Tung (Winston Chao), who agrees to enter a marriage of convenience with his tenant Wei-Wei (May Chin). Wai-Tung is tired of hearing the nagging from his parents back in Taiwan, and Wei-Wei needs a green card to stay in New York, so the pair plans to quietly marry to solve both their dilemmas.
The only problem: Wai-Tung has a long-term boyfriend, Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), and his parents are deeply traditional. When Wai-Tung’s parents come to New York to throw the couple an elaborate wedding, their scheme falls apart.
Ahn’s new adaptation crosses the country, now set in Seattle, and follows two queer couples. Chris (Bowen Yang), a hot mess grad school dropout, and Min (Han Gi-Chan), a Korean art student living off his uber-wealthy family’s fortune, are one couple. The other couple is Chris’s best friend, Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), an emotionally avoidant lab researcher, and Lee (Lily Gladstone), a headstrong community organizer for a local LGBTQ+ community center.
The two couples create a dynamic that not only showcases an incredibly strong friendship but is also wonderful to watch. Although Chris and Angela are often unhealthily codependent on each other, their awareness of this codependency allows for a very close relationship between all members of the group.
The friends are so close that Min and Chris live in the garage of Lee and Angela’s house, which was inherited from Lee’s father. The group goes to art shows, clubs and lion dance drag brunches. Their lives are so intertwined that their individual issues quickly become enveloped by the rest of the group, turning personal struggles into communal ones.
Each couple has a central issue that drives the film. Min’s student visa is expiring imminently, and unless he can find a way to stay in the country, he will be forced to return to South Korea and work for his family’s company. This issue presents a significant practical risk to his and Chris’s relationship. For Lee and Angela, their issue stems from being stuck at a crossroads, deciding whether to take a gamble and invest what little money they have in another round of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
An easy solution would be for Chris and Min to get married. After five years together, it would not be difficult to convince immigration officials that their relationship is legitimate and not just a ploy to secure legal permanent residence. But Chris refuses to accept Min’s initial proposal, and it’s not just because he’s a commitment-phobe. His argument — that there is nothing less romantic than proposing out of apparent desperation to not be deported — is entirely reasonable.
On one wine-drunk night, Min and Lee devise a seemingly perfect plan to solve each of their problems. Angela and Min will get married in a simple courthouse wedding so that he can legally stay in the country, and he will pay for another round of IVF for Lee. The plan sounds simple, until it proves otherwise.
Min’s family becomes the first obstacle in this plan. His grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) is adamant about visiting Min and Angela in Seattle before their wedding. Despite the group’s best efforts to de-queer the house, she clocks their scheme almost immediately upon arriving.
Ja-Young is an unexpected standout in the film. She quickly agrees to support the sham marriage of convenience to protect Min from his conservative grandfather. Her support comes with one caveat: Angela and Min must have a traditional Korean wedding banquet and participate in a media campaign to appease public eyes on the family company. After the wedding, Min and Angela will be free to go back to Chris and Lee, respectively, and their lives can continue as they were.
Despite the language barrier — Ja-Young and Min communicate almost exclusively in Korean — the actors give some of the most moving performances in the film, a great accomplishment considering the other characters’ emotionally rich plotlines. Min’s art speaks volumes to Ja-Young about his experience of queer love, and it is ultimately what drives her to support his choice to love in whatever way feels right for him.
Verbal communication, or lack thereof, is also explored in Angela and Lee’s relationship. The quiet coziness of their love is what makes their story so impressively poignant. Their last scene alone together is entirely wordless, but both convey such strong emotion that their ending is definitive and incredibly satisfying.
One of the most subtle yet moving aspects of the film is the exploration of Lee’s Indigeneity. Earlier in the film, we learn that the house she inherited from her father serves as a way for her to remain close to Duwamish land. While the original film and this adaptation primarily focus on the Asian and queer identities, including Lee’s Indigenous identity is a welcome addition to the story.
Moreover, the choice to make Lee the recipient of IVF treatments addresses a very real concern about a dwindling Indigenous population. Lee’s desire to have her own children quietly touches on her unspoken devotion to her culture.
Ahn’s adaptation of “The Wedding Banquet” reimagines and refreshes the original storyline to cover a wide breadth of audience members and honors all of them with grace. The film’s comedic moments never downplay the emotional impact of the story, making it an excellent entry in the world of queer romance movies and a much-needed delight in the zeitgeist.
Camille Robinson is an Arts & Entertainment Staff Writer. She can be reached at camilllr@uci.edu.
Edited by Drew Askeland and Jaheem Conley