The Wedding Banquet (eng subs) [1993] Ang Lee

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The Wedding Banquet (1993)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107156/

Mandarin Chinese language English subtitles

The Wedding Banquet is a 1993 film about a gay Taiwanese immigrant man who marries a mainland Chinese woman to placate his parents and get her a green card. His plan backfires when his parents arrive in the United States to plan his wedding banquet.

The film was directed by Ang Lee and stars Winston Chao, Mitchell Lichtenstein, May Chin, Ah Lei Gua, Dion Birney, Sihung Lung, and others. The Wedding Banquet is the first of three movies that Ang Lee would make about gay characters; the second is Brokeback Mountain and the third being Taking Woodstock. Lee himself makes a cameo appearance in the film as a wedding guest attending the banquet. The film is a co-production between Taiwan and the United States.

Dion Birney ... Andrew
Jeanne Kuo Chang ... Wai-Tung's Secretary
Winston Chao ... Wai-Tung Gao
Paul Chen ... Guest
May Chin ... Wei-Wei
Chung-Wei Chou ... Chef
Yun Chung ... Guest
Ho-Mean Fu ... Guest
Michael Gaston ... Justice of the Peace
Ya-lei Kuei ... Mrs. Gao
Jeffrey Howard ... Street Musician
Theresa Hou ... Female Cashier
Yung-Teh Hsu ... Bob Law, Wai-Tung's Old Friend

In December 1993, a novelization of the film, titled Wedding Banquet and published in Japan, was written by Yuji Konno

In 2003, a musical staging was performed at the Village Theatre. 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.

We are now, we sense, entering La Cage aux Folles country, and The Wedding Banquet does take some of the same delight in constructing a comedy of misunderstandings and deceptions. But the movie also has a warm heart, and by the end somehow manages to become very moving.

The director, Ang Lee, approaches his material in a low-key way, not punching up the big dramatic or comic moments. And the actors, especially Winston Chao as Wai-Tung, have a curious fatalism about them, as if their characters are resigned to the worst. There are moments of obvious comedy, such as when the parents subscribe to a matchmaking service for their son, who specifies he requires a very tall opera singer, only to find that the service can supply one. But there are more moments when the film deals simply and directly with the feelings and fears of its characters.

For Wei-Wei (May Chin), the pretend marriage with Wai-Tung makes good sense, but is also painful, because she has a crush on him and would like to be married to him for real. For Wai-Tung, the whole charade is uncomfortable, because dishonest. And for Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), his American boyfriend, what starts as a lark ends painfully, as he hangs around the outskirts of the wedding, his omnipresence never quite explained.

The father and mother (Sihung Lung and Ah-Leh Gua) arrive with shining eyes, but cannot fail to sense a certain lack of sincerity between the loving couple. A wedding by a justice of the peace does not match their vision of a suitable ceremony. And then an old friend of the father's materializes, now a successful restaurant owner, and offers to stage a proper Chinese wedding banquet. The banquet is the movie's great set piece, as booze and tradition and deception and expectation all come together, and lead, in an unlikely way, to happiness.

The Wedding Banquet is not a particularly slick film; the plot construction feels contrived, and the acting of the two younger men is somewhat self-conscious, although the parents are magnificent.

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.

What at first seems like a simple romantic comedy is actually a deceptively perceptive look at cultural, sexual, and generational differences. And, despite The Wedding Banquet's often-light, occasionally-playful tone, a forceful dramatic structure underlies the film. Of course, this is what usually makes for the best kind of comedy -- a movie that cares more about its story and characters than making people laugh. Chinese-American writer/director/producer Ang Lee displays a remarkable aptitude for presenting a balanced view of issues while avoiding the dangerous trap of cliches and stereotypes. All the characters have their own unique identities.

While there isn't anything revolutionary in the story, and some of the twists are easy to predict, it's never clear until the end how everything is going to be resolved. And, although it deals with potentially-weighty issues and some very powerful emotional impulses, The Wedding Banquet never becomes bogged down by its own seriousness. Lee manages to keep the production buoyant by including scenes that are often riotously funny.

The actors are uniformly good. May Chin, a huge pop star in Taiwan, gives a complex rendering of Wei Wei, conveying the churning emotions of the one person in this film who really has no one. Although this is his screen debut, Winston Chao doesn't show any obvious chinks in his performance. Mitchell Lichtenstein's Simon could easily have slipped into obscurity, but the actor maintains a strong enough presence to avoid such an ignominious fate. Stately and dignified, Sihung Lung and Ah-Leh Gua breathe life into Mr. and Mrs. Gao, Wai's parents.

It's understandable why The Wedding Banquet won the Golden Bear award at the 1993 Berlin Film Festival and the Best Film and Best Director citations at the 1993 Seattle International Film Festival. There is enough depth in this picture to fill up several movies, yet The Wedding Banquet shortchanges none of its interwoven storylines. While I won't go so far as to say that this is a magical motion picture, it certainly serves as excellent entertainment on more than one level.