The Wedding Banquet

The Wedding Banquet[3] is a 1993 romantic comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Ang Lee. The story concerns a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant man (played by Winston Chao, in his film debut) who marries a mainland Chinese woman (May Chin) to placate his parents (Gua Ah-leh and Lung Sihung) and get her a green card. His plan backfires when his parents arrive in the United States to plan his wedding banquet and he has to hide the truth of his gay partner (Mitchell Lichtenstein). It was a co-production of Lee’s Good Machine production company, and the Taiwanese Central Motion Picture Corporation.

Lee’s second feature film and his first to get a theatrical release in the United States, The Wedding Banquet premiered at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear. It was both a critical and commercial success and won five Golden Horse Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. It received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Foreign-Language Film, as well as six Independent Spirit Award nominations.

Together with Pushing Hands (1991) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), all showing the Confucian family at risk, and all starring the Taiwanese actor Lung Sihung, The Wedding Banquet forms what has been called Lee’s “Father Knows Best” trilogy.[4]

In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.”

Trailer

Plot

Gao Wai-Tung is a gay Taiwanese immigrant happily living in Manhattan with his gay Jewish partner Simon. He has not come out to his traditionally-minded parents who live back in Taiwan, and as he’s in his late-20s, they’ve become eager to see him get married and have a child in order to continue the family line. When his parents hire a dating service, Wai-Tung and Simon stall for time by inventing numerous impossible demands. They demand an opera singer and add that she must be 5’9″, have two PhDs, and speak five languages. To their shock, the service actually locates a 5’8″ Chinese woman who meets all but one of their qualifications, having only a single PhD instead of two. She is very gracious when Wai-Tung explains his dilemma, as she too is hiding a relationship with a white man from her parents.

At Simon’s insistence, Wai-Tung decides to marry one of his tenants, Wei-Wei, a penniless artist from mainland China in need of a green card. Besides helping Wei-Wei, the couple hope that this will placate Wai-Tung’s parents. To complicate matters, Mr. and Mrs. Gao announce they will visit. Before the parents arrive, Simon tells Wei-Wei everything she needs to know about Wai-Tung’s habits, body, and lifestyle, and the three hastily take down all gay imagery and decor from the house and hang Mandarin calligraphy scrolls in its place.

Mr. and Mrs. Gao arrive bringing gifts and US$30,000 to hold an extravagant wedding for their son, believing he has a wealthy fiancee. Wai-Tung dares not tell his parents the truth, because his father (a retired army officer) has just recovered from a stroke. As a part of the lie, Wai-Tung introduces Simon as his landlord.

The day after his parents arrive, Wai-Tung announces that he and Wei-Wei plan to be married by a Justice of the Peace. However, the heartbreak his mother experiences at the courthouse wedding, both at the arrangement and at the discovery of the low social class of Wei-Wei, moves Wai-Tung to make up for the ‘disgraceful’ wedding by accepting the offer of a magnificent wedding banquet from Mr. Gao’s former batman, who now owns a restaurant and reception hall. After the lavish banquet, a huge party of relatives and friends barges into the bridal suite for an after party and demand that the newlyweds get in bed naked before they will leave. This leads to Wei-Wei’s pregnancy. Simon is extremely upset when he finds out, provoking an argument between the two of them and Wei-Wei, and his relationship with Wai-Tung begins to deteriorate.

Mr. Gao suffers another stroke, and in a moment of anger after the fight, Wai-Tung admits the truth to his mother. She is shocked and insists that he not tell his father. However, the perceptive Mr. Gao has seen more than he is letting on, and tells Simon that he knows about their relationship and considers Simon his son as well, appreciating the considerable sacrifices he made to be together with Wei-Tung. Mr. Gao gives Simon a hongbao, a symbolic admission of their relationship, but has Simon promise not to let on to the others that he knows the truth, saying that without the sham marriage, he’d never have a grandchild. While en route to an appointment for an abortion, Wei-Wei decides to keep the baby, and asks Simon to stay together with Wai-Tung and be the baby’s father too.

At the airport before the Gaos’ flight home, Mr. Gao accepts Simon and warmly shakes his hand, and Mrs. Gao bids Wei-Wei a fond farewell before they walk off to board their plane, leaving the unconventional new family to figure themselves out.

Cast

Winston Chao as Gao Wai-Tung (simplified Chinese: 高伟同; traditional Chinese: 高偉同; pinyin: Gāo Wěitóng; Wade–Giles: Kao Wei-t’ung)
May Chin as Gu Wei-Wei (顧葳葳; Gù Wēiwēi; Ku Wei-wei)
Mitchell Lichtenstein as Simon (賽門; Sàimén)
Gua Ah-leh as Mrs. Gao (高母; Gāo mǔ), Wai-Tung’s mother
Lung Sihung as Mr. Gao (高父; Gāo fù), Wai-Tung’s father
Vanessa Yang as Mao Mei (毛妹; Máo mèi)
Dion Birney as Andrew
Neal Huff as Steve
Jeanne Kuo Chang as Wai-Tung’s secretary
Hsu Yung-Teh as Bob Law
Eddie Johns as Haskell
Michael Gaston as Justice of the Peace
Mason Lee as a baby
Ang Lee as a wedding guest

Images

Production

Development and Writing

Neil Peng approached director Ang Lee with the idea behind The Wedding Banquet in 1986 by revealing to Lee that one of their mutual friends had moved to the United States and was in a same-sex relationship without the knowledge of the man’s parents. Lee and Peng began writing the screenplay two years later and were soon joined by James Schamus. In the published screenplay version of the film, Schamus wrote that the film was “first drafted in Chinese, then translated into English, re-written in English, translated back into Chinese, and eventually subtitled in Chinese and English and a dozen other languages.” The script won a Taiwan state film competition in 1990.[6]

Casting

The Wedding Banquet was the debut film of Winston Chao, whom Ang Lee met on an airline where he was working as a flight attendant. Chao, who had no formal acting training, was reticent to take the part, until Lee agreed to coach him with an acting instructor of his choosing. Chao spent three-to-four hours each day before and during filming in in-depth rehearsals.

Filming

Filming took place entirely on-location in New York City. To keep the budget low, the production used free or public locations, including JFK International Airport, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting, Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, and cast and crew members’ homes.[1] The titular banquet scene was shot in the ballroom of a Sheraton Hotel near LaGuardia Airport.

Reception

The Wedding Banquet received positive reviews; on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “Ang Lee’s funny and ultimately poignant comedy of manners reveals the filmmaker’s skill across genres.”[7] Alan Jones of the Radio Times said, “Sharply observed and never once striking a false note, this sweet-and-sour rib-tickler is a real treat.” Roger Ebert wrote, “What makes the film work is the underlying validity of the story, the way the filmmakers don’t simply go for melodrama and laughs, but pay these characters their due. At the end of the film, I was a little surprised how much I cared for them.”[8]

The worldwide gross of The Wedding Banquet was $23.6 million. The New York Times reported a budget of $750,000.[9] Considering the $1 million budget reported by Variety, the film was also the most financially profitable movie of 1993, when considered in terms of ratios of return, while overall top grosser Jurassic Park only earned a ratio of 13.8 ($914 million earnings on a $60 million budget).[2]

Stage Adaptations and Remake

In December 1993, a novelization of the film, titled Wedding Banquet (ウェディングバンケット, Wedingu Banketto) and published in Japan, was written by Yūji Konno (今野雄二, Konno Yūji). (ISBN 4-8387-0508-5)[13]

In 2003, the Village Theatre presented a musical staging of the story. It was directed by John Tillinger, choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, with music by Woody Pak and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey. Yorkey, Village’s associate artistic director, said this of the production, “The film succeeds because of Ang Lee’s delicate poetry, and there is no way we can replicate that or translate that into a musical. So we took the story a step further. Whereas the film ends very ambiguously, our musical goes on past where the film ends”. The show starred Welly Yang as Wai Tung.[14]

A remake from director Andrew Ahn starring Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran and Bowen Yang in the key roles, with supporting parts from Joan Chen and Youn Yuh-jung. Principal photography will take place in Vancouver, British Columbia from May 27, 2024 to June 28, 2024.[12]