People need each other. We gravitate to one another. We form relationships, families and communities. But we’re messy. We make mistakes. And sometimes we feel trapped.
Loosely based on Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same name, writer-director Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet brilliantly navigates the messiness, compromises and radical acceptance it takes to have and to hold each other without losing ourselves in the process.
Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) are a lesbian couple trying for a baby, but they’ve had little success with Lee’s IVF and can’t afford another treatment. Their friends Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-chan) live in their garage and have their own relationship troubles. Min comes from a wealthy family in South Korea, but he’ll soon be forced to leave the United States when his student visa expires. Min’s famously homophobic grandfather holds the key to his financial future, so coming out of the closet and marrying Chris is off the table.
A few drinks and a whole lot of desperation lead to an unorthodox proposal: Min will pay for Lee’s next IVF treatment if Angela agrees to marry him. A simple courthouse wedding seems sufficient to seal the deal, but the plan goes awry when Min’s grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) flies into town unannounced and expects a big traditional wedding celebration. The chaos that ensues deviates from the original film in new, surprising and extremely satisfying ways.
Ahn and co-writer James Schamus (who also co-wrote Lee’s version of the film) do not shy away from the current heaviness of issues surrounding immigration or queer parenthood in their screenplay — but these lovingly drawn characters had me laughing as often as I was crying. Tran and Yang play the self-proclaimed screw-ups of the group, and they radiate incredible amounts of natural sweetness toward each other. Gladstone brings gorgeous emotional depth and heartache to their part, and Han deftly balances the sincerity and whimsy his role requires. Min’s grandmother Ja-Young and Angela’s misguided mother May (the excellent Joan Chen) share some beautifully written and acted moments together, and Bobo Le leaves a lasting impression as Chris’ Gen-Z cousin Kendall with a fun and touching performance. The Wedding Banquet thrives because of the people in it — people who span generations, genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities and nationalities. This film needs its ensemble as much as we need each other.
Queer and immigrant communities today face prejudice, legal challenges and state-sanctioned violence. For better or worse, love does not acknowledge borders or constructs. Love grows where it pleases. Unfortunately, we can’t always control what happens to us or our families and friends. But we can control how we react and how we choose to move forward. The Wedding Banquet sees us with all of our power and frailty, and urges us to press on together toward a future where love is enough.
