The Wedding Banquet

 

This review may contain spoilers!

The Wedding Banquet is a remake of the Ang Lee-directed 1993 film of the same name. Within this feature, Korean trust fund baby, Min, faces an impending return to South Korea due to his visa expiring. When his American boyfriend, Chris, turns down Min's proposal, Min presents a new solution. He will marry their lesbian friend, Angela, and in return pay for Angela and her girlfriend, Lee's, next round of IVF. However, the plan encounters a hitch when Min's grandmother arranges a visit to oversee the wedding.

Andrew Ahn is a queer director and storyteller whom I greatly enjoy and want to see more of. His work on Fire Island was very memorable and indicative of the way he lifts up queer and Asian culture via his storytelling. The Wedding Banquet is similar in the way it presents a lot of facets of these cultures that the average viewer wouldn't consider. The film opens with an allusion to Chinese dragon dance, that is immediately subverted with performative drag for a gala. I think many people wouldn't be used to the conversations this film is willing to have; like Angela's mother presenting as such a strong ally and putting herself on a pedestal for supporting her daughter when there were parts of their history where this wasn't overtly true. We get a very detailed examination of IVF motherhood, and the parenting choice conversation held between queer couples. I felt Angela grappling with this amidst her previously mentioned mother issues made for an interesting lead role perspective. There is also a discussion of commitment in queer relationships, which is another conversation point that doesn't get a major spotlight. I most especially loved how queer friendships are presented through a 'found family' lens, due to shared experience and interest this is something very true of the queer community and The Wedding Banquet presents this very well. I mean just look at the last shot of the film, it's a special one.

The score for this feature is beautiful, setting a melodic tone that resonates consistently and yet manages to evoke a range of emotions throughout.

Bowen Yang, who played Chris, is surprisingly better when he's not playing it up for laughs here; Yang's character isn't the nicest and yet he still finds a way to ground the character and make him feel sincere. Lily Gladstone, who played Lee, just shows us all why she is an Academy Award nominee; I loved Lee and her enormous capacity for love and reflective conversations about the future of her relationship. Kelly Marie Tran, who played Angela Chen, really leads this film in a way that I loved; Tran presents a protagonist with a real chip on their shoulder and who wants to do right by others despite her own insecurities. Youn Yuh-Jung, who played Ja-Young, has a really well-rounded character arc; Yuh-Jung presents an older Korean woman who grows from her more conservative views out of love for her grandson.

However, the best performance came from Joan Chen, who played May Chen. This was a character you know from the opening scene will steal the show more often than not. Chen's energy is infectious and she definitely winds up carrying the comedic load of the film. Just watching her grind up on that Chinese dragon had me in fits. Chen is playing a mother who is this sort of 'mega ally', she's involved in more queer support groups than her lesbian daughter. She is this overbearing gossip and she loves to make things larger than life. It is a real whirlwind of a character that could have just been played for comedy. Yet, Chen brings a lovely bit of nuance to the character. Her scenes with Yuh-jung in which she gently supports the Korean grandmother towards a more loving approach to her grandson are quite beautiful. I also loved the dynamic she shares with Tran; that scene in the bathroom where she comforts her on-screen daughter and reflects on her own flaws is one of those real human moments only fleetingly captured in film.

I found The Wedding Banquet to be another Andrew Ahn success in that it had a lot to shine a spotlight on, but I'm not convinced the story told really did a good job with that. These conversation points deserved to be the focal point and they often lost their edge just as we started delving a little deeper into them. This is a feature that tries desperately to be a romantic comedy, but it feels more naturally aligned to being a romantic drama. The humour often feels misplaced, sudden or it straight up doesn't land. I found the constant need for a scene to get a little goofier distracting, and essentially it dumbed the story being told down. While I liked the conversation around commitment in queer relationships, this film doesn't make Chris very likeable which makes the good turn ending a bit harder to swallow. I also felt this film let the novelty of the fake relationship die out too soon. The grandmother working everything out straight away was realistic but it took a lot of fun out of the story. It was also hard to believe Min came from the type of money he did when the film rarely could present a location or character dressed in a manner that reflected this descriptor.

This film clearly didn't have much budget behind it and it sadly showed in the production elements of the film. The cinematography tries for this cosy, light indie vibe most of the time but tends to land on blocky framing and restrictive sequences that feel pushed for time. The editing doesn't really support this either, with static cutting that sets a dull pace to the whole thing. The soundtrack for this film is just too empty, beyond one excellent track from Chinese American Bear, there is nothing here to lift the film up.

Han Gi-Chan, who played Min, just seems confused by the tone of the film; he is almost always playing to comedy in an over-the-top cartoonish manner. Bobo Le, who played Kendall, feels a bit surplus to requirements in this film; Le is meant to be a guiding point for Yang's role but the pair have quite a disinteresting chemistry with one another.

It is an impressive queer work that gets lost in the weeds trying to be funny and could have been a little stronger with some of the messages it was trying to convey. I would give The Wedding Banquet a 6.5/10.