The Wedding Banquet

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This 1993 international hit by Ang Lee is a funny and poignant story of a gay, Taiwanese-American man who goes to some lengths to fool his visiting family that he's actually straight. The results are far more complicated and entertaining than anyone could have guessed. The film seems all the more rich now since Lee has become a major Hollywood director: that same sensitivity and mild bemusement he brought to such stories of manners as Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm in recent years are in full bloom in this earlier work. --Tom Keogh

Description

Dig in! This "funny and poignant comedy of manners" (The New York Times), directed and co-written by Oscar(r) nominee* Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility), is an absolutely delicious feast! Winner of the Berlin Film Festival's prestigious Golden Bear, The Wedding Banquet is "top-notch comedy" (Leonard Maltin)! Successful New Yorker Wai Tung and his partner Simonare blissfully happy, except for one thing: Wai Tung's conservative Taiwanese parents are determined he find a nice girl to marry! To please themand get a tax breakhe arranges a sham marriage to Wei Wei, a sexy go-getter in need of a green card. But when his family swoops down for the extravaganza, Wai Tung would do well to remember that at a traditional Chinese wedding banquet, sexual repression takes the night off!

Customer Reviews:

quirky and well-directed............2007-08-12

I must say that it was quite intriguing to watch this film, directed by Ang Lee, after watching another one of his earlier films that he was well-known for [EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN]. This "comedy of errors" storyline is as chaotic as it is engaging. A Taiwanese-American man (Winston Chao) involved in a long term relationship with his White gay lover (Dion Birney) must pretend to be straight when his parents come to town. What's more, they want to find him a good Taiwanese wife. Though, he makes it clear that his standards are impossibly high, his parents find the woman who matches ALL of his qualifications. Thus, the plot thickens. I won't ruin it for you. I will say that it is, both, a comedy of errors and a human drama of bombastic proportions. The themes include those of loyalty, bicultural identity and familial duty. As usual, Ang Lee is in fine form with this one.

Before Ang became a superstar director for Crouching Tiger.......2007-04-09

and opened the door for a flood of mostly fantastic Asian movies, he made this disfunctional/functional family film. So well done and believable, not sappy at all. The actors are excellent and played their parts well. Very successful [...] yuppie couple, one couple's parents don't know he's [...] so his mom keeps sending him applications and pictures of available Chinese mail order brides, he keeps making out the applications with more and more impossible requirements for one person to have, like, has to speak 5 languages, has to sing opera, has to have 3 doctorial degrees, stuff like that. It's been successful so far but, his parents are getting impatient and want a grandchild, so he makes a bargain with one of his illegal tennants, she wants a green card he needs a wife for a week or so. Parents arrive, his father,a retired general, is in ill health, so they have a quickie wedding at city hall. They go out to dinner after, and just happen to pick a Chinese resturant that is owned by a former soldier in his fathers regement. He is so honored that his former general is at his resturant he offers to foot the bill for a lavish wedding banquet. So, the banquet is held ,it is a beautiful and fun filled affair. After the celebration the bride and groom go up to their room and are more than slightly tipsey, have sex, and of course she gets pregnant. His life partner is not thrilled, but understands, his mother is thrilled to pieces, but his father is very quiet about it. I don't think the son gave his father enough credit to understand his lifestyle, after all, he was a general and must have delt with situations like that, anyway the father was very respectful to his life partner and understood, the mother however was still waxing rapsodic about her son seeing his child born would make him "straighten out" so to speak. Parents go back to China with most of what they came for, they got their wedding, grandchild in the works and their son happy with the person of his choice. Enjoy!

A great relationship film and much more.......2006-12-04

I first saw the WEDDING BANQUET upon initial release, and I revisited it again recently. A bit more sophisticated in its' human observations, it's a film that has grown stronger with time's passage.

Lee emerged as an independent filmmaker (an alum of NYU, along with the likes of Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch, who also emerged from the school during the 1980s), and his earliest films were a great indication that independent filmmaking could tackle complex themes, surpassing Hollywood standards, and still connect meaningfully with audiences.

Lee also may be ahead of his time as a globally focused filmmaker - also evident here. With an unusual knack for balancing cultural specifics (and how they fit into individual lives), and broader universal elements, Lee handles cultural clashes, and assimilation wonderfully - WEDDING BANQUET features some of the most entertaining riffs on such themes (the justice of the peace wedding scene is definitely a classic comic moment) to have graced the big screen. To varying degrees, these themes have surfaced in some fashion in all of Lee's films (also notably in EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, and it's US remake TORTILLA SOUP); here they are at their most charming.

Overall this film was marketed as something like a gay-themed update on the classic Hollywood "screwball comedy" genre, which it isn't exactly - WEDDING BANQUET moves at a slower pace, and has its' share of humor, but also offers an abundance of very thoughtfully crafted drama. Like EAT DRINK (and also ICE STORM), Lee is very skilled at shaping relationships, and zeroing in on poignant insights within even the bad moments, and in many ways this film stands as one of his finest.

-David Alston

I loved it!.......2006-12-02

Living in New York with a well-paying job, a nice home, a stable relationship with Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), everything appears to be going Wai-Tung (Winston Chao)'s way. But his Taiwanese parents are expecting a traditional marriage with kids and grandkids -- and he hasn't told them that he's gay.

Meanwhile, Wei Wei (May Chin), a carefree and capricious artist living in a building owned by Wai, has to find a way to acquire a green card or be deported. A solution to both quandaries is proposed: a marriage of convenience. The preparations are made, and everything seems to be going according to plan until Wai's parents arrive from China to plan the wedding banquet.

This is a movie that cares more about the story and its characters than making comedy, adn although there are some scenes that are hilarious, The Wedding Banquet never takes itself too seriously nor does it give way to slapstick and gags just for gags' sake.

Ang Lee demonstrates a extraordinary ability for portraying a objective view of issues while avoiding the snare of cliches and stereotypes. All the characters have their own unique personalities and live and breathe on their own.

The actors are all excellent and the film is well made and I just loved it!

A Promising Director Named "Ang Lee" Finding His Rhythm.......2006-08-26

"HSI YEN" (the movie's Chinese title) was Ang Lee's second feature, and his first that was released in the U.S. It was financed as a "no budget" movie; the idea was to give a promising young filmmaker an opportunity to direct.

So if one thinks of WEDDING BANQUET as a film student's post-grad project, it really helps. These lowered expectations allow one to enjoy the movie without comparing it to Lee's subsequent, vastly more accomplished work. This movie has some amusing set-ups and good cross-cultural material. But its "outrageous" premise seems a wee bit tired now, and there is one major stumbling block:

Aside from a nice turn by Winston Chao and Ah Lei Gua (who play Andrew's parents), the acting ranges from competent to laughable. And the script has some pretty embarrassing moments as well. (For example, when Simon returns home and Andrew is in his room. "Where were you?" "Out." "Out where?" "Out doing things." Ouch.)

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