Il banchetto di nozze

This film is about a gay Chinese man having to bow down to parental pressure and marry a woman.

IMDb lists this film as comedy. There are comedic scenes such as the post wedding party. Yes, the party is hardly an exaggeration, it is actually done according to the Chinese culture! However, I think The Wedding banquet is better be viewed as a drama. The plot of this film is probably the life story of many gay men of Chinese descent. It is simple, and yet truthful, realistic, touching and affecting.

The main character, Wai-Tung, faces enormous pressure to get married. However, he is actually in love with a Westerner called Andrew. The film fully portrays the pressure Wai-Tung faces because of parental and societal pressure. It also displays how preaches acceptance and tolerance. The ending is so touching, and even months after watching the film, I can still remember the ending.

This is an excellent film. For men who are in situations similar to Wai-Tung, The Wedding Banquet will resonate with them forever. Even if you are not in a similar situation, this film is so touching that it is a must watch!

An early Ang Lee film, he made this one year after his debut film, Pushing Hands, but had actually written it some six years before. Based on the true story of one of his friends in the first half of the film, Lee and co-writer/producer James Schamus take the story through a few smiles onto the screen.

Wai-tung (Winston Chao) is a gay Taiwanese landlord in New York with his boyfriend Simon (Mitchell Liechtenstein). Having not admitted his sexual orientation to his parents, he is pressured by them (and tradition) to get married and to have son to carry the Gao name. Meanwhile, Wei-wei (May Chin) is on the edge of poverty. An Chinese artist living in one of Wai-tung's derelict buildings, she is looking for a green card to avoid deportation. Noticing both situations, Simon suggests they marry out of convenience, but things go wrong when Wai-tung's parents come over to New York and a wedding banquet is held.

Although such a story today would have been regarded as a ordinary for a film plot, Lee's vision at the time it was made was fairly radical for certain sections of society at the time, particularly in conservative Taiwan. Lee pushed the boundaries, even including the first gay kiss scene to appear on Taiwan's screens.

Despite the ground-breaking story and the fact that I am watching it almost 12 years after it was made, I didn't feel that there was a sense of believability in the first half of the film. Characters were very 2D and lacked depth. There was a lot of missing chemistry on-screen, and for most of the first half, I did admit I was a little bored. The second half after the banquet takes place, though, was much better. As the characters are exposed and plots unfold, the story becomes more interesting and was much easier to watch.

However, one other gripe is the fact that the humour doesn't quite make its mark in the movie. There are plenty of opportunities to add the little smiles on peoples' faces, but the attempts to do so were fairly weak. The only time I let out a chuckle was in the City Hall wedding ceremony. Simply put, it doesn't match Ang's third film, Eat Drink Man Woman, in this respect.

Overall though, this is a watchable film, and you can easily see that Lee has developed his techniques quite a long way since his early films. The Wedding Banquet certainly demonstrates why people had faith in him and recognised his talent in the early days. One for a look back.

The Wedding Banquet is marketed as a comedy, but it is more than that. Closer in plot and style to Green Card than The Birdcage it examines the personal consequences of deceit. The comedy is there of course, but so is much tenderness and pain as a marriage of convenience between a gay man and a woman deportee unravels. Like Green Card which had similar plotlines, the "obvious" resolutions do not appear so likely as the film progresses which adds to its attractiveness.

I recommend it highly.

Ang Lee with infinite wisdom seems to be saving the best part of this film for last. Acceptance is the underlying theme of this movie, which I recently watched for the second time. I saw the film when it was originally released in 1993. At that time, it seemed to have been breaking ground for tolerance from the straight world toward gays, in general.

Ang Lee is one of the best film directors working these days. This is a small film in comparison to what came afterward. The story of how parents in a conservative society view their children that are "different" is always an interesting idea. Those same parents produced that child; the mere idea they will turn their backs to a son who is living openly as a gay man is a complex problem, at best.

Different cultures react differently, as is the case in this film. While the parents are not completely taken over by the way they discover their son has turned out to be, they go along with the flow, never condemning the son, his partner, or the young woman who is pretending to be, what she is not.

The acting is good in general, but it has to be the actor who plays the father, who ultimately wins one's heart. His culture goes back for centuries and he is won by his son's lover because he sees how kind, decent and honest he really is.

It's better never to judge, or so it seems that Ang Lee is telling us.

The Wedding Banquet is a truly inspiring and cross-culturally challenging film. It touches on many issues/themes which have never been combined before in one movie: Taiwanese Americans vs. Chinese Americans, Asian American families, old school parents vs. younger generation(s), multi-racial couples, gay couples, gay Asian Americans, immigrants, pride, family values and love.

And… while I found the ending of this movie somewhat unrealistic (I'll let other viewers decide) I also found the film challenging and optimistic (which is where my realism takes over).

You should watch this movie if you are… Asian… gay… Asian AND gay… or simply want to learn something about another culture. You might be surprised!

Props to Ang Lee for creating a unique opportunity to look into two very distinct and different cultures at the same time: Asian American and gays in the early 90s.