THE WEDDING BANQUET
(Check out Chris Reed’s The Wedding Banquet movie review, it hits theaters on Friday, April 18. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
At the top of the list of reasons to see The Wedding Banquet, director Andrew Ahn’s reimagining of Ang Lee’s 1993 eponymous original, is Youn Yuh-jung’s as the Korean grandmother of one of the main characters. Youn (Minari) delivers a beautifully nuanced performance while also being quite funny when the script hands her light bits of comedy. She is by far the best part of the movie, though Lily Gladstone (The Unknown Country), Han Gi-Chan (making his feature debut), and Joan Chen (riffing on her role in Alice Wu’s 2004 lesbian classic, Saving Face) also shine.
This time around, the titular ceremony occupies much less screen time than before, though the basic premise remains superficially similar: a gay-male couple decides to arrange the marriage of one of them to a woman friend to resolve family tensions born of tradition. The twist here is that that woman is herself part of a gay couple, and once dated one of the guys (not the one she will soon try to marry). It’s a recipe for trouble.
The reason for the sham wedding goes like this. Chris (Bowen Yang, The Lost City) and Min (Han) are deeply in love and have been for a while, even if Chris can’t emotionally or mentally handle a formal commitment. Their besties are Angela (Kelly Marie Tran, The Young Wife) and Lee (Gladstone), on whose property they live in a refurbished garage adjacent to the main house. Despite this arrangement, it turns out that Min is quite wealthy: his family owns a major South Korean fashion label. He would rather pursue his dreams as an artist, however.
Unfortunately, his grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn) has other ideas and offers him a choice: to manage a new branch of the company she plans to set up in the United States or head back to South Korea once his student visa runs out. Pick neither option and she will cut him off.
Meanwhile, Angela and Lee have been trying to get pregnant for a while via IVF. Angela has long had a fraught relationship with her own mom, May (Chen)—even if May is now her biggest cheerleader—and is therefore a bit ambivalent about motherhood (Lee is the one trying to conceive). Still, she loves Lee and wants to make her happy. And so, when Min comes up with a plan to stay in America and get his grandmother off his back by marrying Min and giving her and Lee money for a new round of treatments, she accepts. Why can’t Min just marry Chris? Chris is allergic to the idea and Min knows his grandfather is deeply homophobic.
That’s just the setup. Much plot follows, a lot of it frenetically dispatched. The cast is very game, but Ahn’s mise-en-scène is not always up to the task of balancing comedy and drama with the required finesse. He demands serious work from Yang (not his forte) and comic bursts from Tran (ditto); both actors end up pushing too hard and missing the mark a few too many times.
But there are still successes, including the message of compassion and empathy that prevails throughout. It’s hard not to like a narrative filled with such goodwill, whatever the occasional missteps. Love, it turns out, is a winning strategy.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
The Wedding Banquet, Andrew Ahn
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