It’s difficult to get excited about a remake. Even now, after years of watching brave executives hack away at the walls of the content mines with their billion-dollar pickaxes to unearth intellectual property no one could’ve imagined (or wanted), the cyclical nature of the modern movie industry is hard to get used to. No matter how often audiences demand original content, their needs are rarely met. Want to experience something new? Too bad. You’ll get “Shrek 5” where Shrek’s ogre offspring use TikTok, and you’ll like it.
But when an Oscar-winning director’s stateside breakthrough that became an essential part of countless lives and changed the direction of an entire subgenre of cinema gets remade, one has to sit up and take notice, even if their remake fatigue tells them otherwise. After all, Ang Lee’s 1993 film “The Wedding Banquet” is exceptionally special. The Taiwanese director’s second feature marked his first American theatrical release, paving the way for lighthearted queer cinema in a decade still contending with the ravages of the AIDS crisis. The film, about a bisexual Taiwanese landlord who enters a marriage of convenience with his woman tenant to quell his persistent parents, was a major success among critics and audiences. Unlike so many queer films of the time, Lee’s movie was not a sullen documentary, nor was it about HIV/AIDS or gay people who get killed or turn out to be murderers themselves. “The Wedding Banquet” was a romantic dramedy about family and love, and how difficult it can be to reconcile a breach between those two things when they are fundamentally linked.
“The Wedding Banquet” doesn’t simply slap a new coat of paint on a faded project; it finds new resonance in a classic story, setting a standard every remake of this nature should aim for.
Unlike other recent remakes like “Road House” or “The Crow,” where the bar set by the original film isn’t exactly sky-high, remaking something as beloved as “The Wedding Banquet” is a uniquely challenging task. A lot has changed for queer people over the last 32 years. You may have heard we can get legally married now. (Let’s hope that’s still true by the time you read this!) And the dynamic between the three central characters in “The Wedding Banquet” looks more like your modern-day polycule than it does an outrageously absurd farce. Those things don’t mean that queerness is universally accepted now. But our experiences have become so widely acknowledged that they necessitate a major narrative overhaul for any remake to be halfway decent.
Happily, the new version of “The Wedding Banquet” is more than just decent, it’s a worthy companion to Lee’s original film, with as much potential impact as its progenitor. Directed by Andrew Ahn and co-written by Ahn and the original film’s co-writer James Schamus, “The Wedding Banquet” is star-studded and delightful, an amiable and intimate look at contemporary queerness and all of the intricate difficulties it poses, even in a more progressive society. The remake flips the script with intention; instead of merely swapping a gender here or adding new characters there, Ahn’s film also explores how the queer experience has changed in the last three decades — and how it hasn’t. “The Wedding Banquet” doesn’t simply slap a new coat of paint on a faded project; it finds new resonance in a classic story, setting a standard every remake of this nature should aim for.
Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran in “The Wedding Banquet” (Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street)In this iteration, Ahn casts a wide net, expanding the story from Lee’s original to further examine how queer relationships contend with Asian diaspora. Instead of one central couple, there are two, each with their own neuroses and ways of relating to one another. Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) are a lesbian couple living together in the Pacific Northwest, while their friends Chris (Bowen Yang) and his boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan), a Korean artist in the states on a student visa, shack up in the pair’s guest house in the garden. It’s a dream living situation for any group of queer friends, one that ensures there’s always a friendly ear close by, ready to listen when someone needs to blow off steam. And that’s happening a lot these days. Angela and Lee are trying their second round of an exhausting IVF process. Meanwhile, Chris harbors envy over Min’s artistic success, as his own creative pursuits are on pause in favor of leading bird tours around the greater Seattle area. Instead of voicing their concerns to their respective partners, Chris and Angela let their feelings stew, only venting to each other privately.
That quickly changes when Lee’s second round of IVF doesn’t take, putting even more strain on her and Angela. The couple needs to have tough conversations about whether or not to continue the process, one that they can barely afford, both financially and emotionally. And when Min’s visa nears its expiration, he proposes a solution that he thinks will work for everyone.
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To avoid being cut off by his rich, homophobic grandparents, Min suggests that he and Angela get married. Their marriage will allow him to score a green card and keep up appearances with his family, ensuring that the cash from his trust stays rolling in. In return, Min will pay for Lee’s third and final round of IVF and help support their child. Naturally, such a convoluted plan only begets more problems, particularly with Angela’s mother, May (Joan Chen), who prides herself on being the best (aka, the most public-facing) gay ally she can be. How will May possibly fill her days — and her Instagram grid — if she can’t boast about her lesbian daughter online and at local PFLAG meetings? The dread is real, but it’s nothing compared to the unexpected arrival of Min’s grandmother, Ja-Young (a terrific Youn Yuh-jung), who sees through the entire scheme.
With this revelation happening early in the film, Ahn and Schamus quickly pivot away from the expectations of a remake to confirm their intentions. They want this version of “The Wedding Banquet” to be modern and realistic, and let’s face it, no grandparent in 2025 is going to buy Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang as a straight couple who happen to live in the guest house out back. If Ahn’s updated film kept in line with Lee’s original, it would need to restrict itself to some of that movie’s more outdated narrative elements, impeding the remake before it’d even have a chance to get going. But letting Ja-Young in on the plan from the start enables “The Wedding Banquet” to go to emotional places its predecessor could not. It’s less about how we fit into cultural traditions and more about how cultural traditions fit into our lives. That means the titular wedding banquet isn’t as realized as the original film’s. But the scenes leading up to the nuptials ask many more interesting, funny questions about life’s larger truths, rather than spending a fair amount of time watching our characters trying to make a lie seem believable.
Keeping the truth from someone might not be outright dishonesty, but it’s a rot that decays the same way, just festering at a slower pace.
To its credit, Lee’s “Wedding Banquet” was adept at imbuing humanity into what could’ve easily been a very unserious comedy. Though it’s not streaming anywhere, it’s worth seeking out, especially for its ending, which finds a beautiful intersection between tender and emotionally heavy thanks to its trio of stars. As Min, the remake’s answer to the original film’s Wai-Tung (played by Winston Chao), Han is just as dopey and lovable as his predecessor. Whereas Wai-Tung was an overserious Brooklyn landlord, Min is a lighthearted Seattle artist. Despite the personality differences between the characters, Ahn and Schamus deftly illustrate their similarities. They’re both openhearted to a fault, only lying to protect and care for the people they love.
In this updated version, Ahn probes further into that theme and to great success. “The Wedding Banquet” ponders the lengths we’ll go to to protect our loved ones from being hurt, and asks how far is too far when shielding people from the realities of life. Instead of talking openly with their partners, Chris and Angela bottle their feelings and tuck the vacuum-sealed vials in a dark corner where they’ll never be found. It’s a false idea of protection, arguably this movie’s central lie. Keeping the truth from someone might not be outright dishonesty, but it’s a rot that decays the same way, just festering at a slower pace.
Han Gi-Chan, Youn Yuh-Jung and Kelly Marie Tran in “The Wedding Banquet” (Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street). Ahn relays this most beautifully when he pulls focus from the interpersonal chaos of Angela, Lee, Chris and Min, and diverts it to Ja-Young. With the cat out of the bag, no one has to pretend around her, but everyone still feels uncertain about how to act. She arranges for the wedding to continue as planned, if only to appease Min’s grandfather, who stayed behind in Korea. They can take ceremonial photographs, have them published in local Korean papers, and Min’s other grandparent will remain none the wiser until the day he dies. It’s a concession Min is willing to live with, but one that seems to unsettle Ja-Young.
As Ja-Young goes about her days leading up to the wedding, Ahn recalls a pivotal line from the original “Wedding Banquet,” when, during a private moment together, Wai-Tung’s father tells his partner, “I watch, I hear, I learn.” In Ahn’s film, Ja-Young does the same. Ahn frames her face in plenty of moments of quiet introspection, and in another scene, shows her flipping through a book of Chris’ sketches, curious about where his passion lies and how his family reacted to his coming out.
In Lee’s film, viewers weren’t afforded as much time alone with Wai-Tung’s Taiwanese parents. Audiences got a sense of their relationship to their son, but little about who they were as people — a choice suited to the film’s incredible, opaque ending. But here, Ahn and Schamus infuse Ja-Young with legible compassion, a major credit to Youn’s fantastic performance. Here, Youn builds on her incredible Oscar-winning turn in 2020’s “Minari” with an equally affectionate role, even if her love comes through in different, more antiquated ways. And when Ahn gracefully reaches a late-period revelation in the film, he reminds viewers that just because Ja-Young is old-fashioned doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of love or change. Sometimes, our worldview is little more than circumstantial, something we cling to to protect ourselves or others from harm. It’s not the best way of moving through life, but it’s a start. Our mistakes make us human, but admitting them brings us together, and in Ahn’s take on “The Wedding Banquet,” all imperfect parties are welcome to RSVP.
“The Wedding Banquet” arrives in theaters Friday, April 18.
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