Garçon d'honneur

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.

I suppose The Wedding Banquet could be considered a romantic comedy. It is so in the best senses of both words: romantic without being sappy, and comedic without being ridiculous. The characters are vibrant and interesting without being cliches. Ang Lee has not created a great movie, simply a perfect one.

The central character of "The Wedding Banquet" looks sullen through almost the entire movie. He knits his brow and ponders as if there were something troubling him to no end. At the very outset, it's quite clear what that is. Wai-Tung is gay, and he hasn't told his Taiwanese parents. He's annoyed with his mother's unwelcome attempts to match him with someone, so she can have what she wants: a grandchild. But he's afraid to tell her or his father why he is not interested. His mixed emotions have no place to go; so they sit on his face, incomplete and unexpressed, except as unresolved anger, much of it at himself. And it's fun to watch as he goes through the motions of pleasing family and lover and acquaintances to take his mind off his troubles.

The script by director Ang Lee, and associates Neil Peng and James Schamus have written a crackerjack story full of things that never have hit the screen before. The wedding banquet itself is full of such insightful details about contemporary Chinese-American life and sentiment that there seems something accomplished that's new to the movies. When the wedding party invades the honeymoon suite, you feel like the writers have a firm grasp on the people they are presenting us, as if they know them, inside and out. I have seen five movies directed by Ang Lee, and this (and maybe his earlier "Pushing Hands") is the only one in which I felt he had a deep understanding of the characters, and for that matter, of human nature and human love.

Filial piety may not be a new thing for the Chinese, and maybe that is why this movie feels rooted, grounded. Wai-Tung who is a successful businessman and landlord commands respect among his colleagues, but when he's with his parents, he's still their little boy. You laugh as this grown man walks with his father, head bowed, keeping exact pace, two steps back, and you realize the secret of the older man's hold on his imitator. Wai-Tung loves his parents, and he knows what they expect. He's ashamed that he doesn't want to fulfill their dreams, that he wants a life of his own, that he didn't turn out as they hoped. But he also cares about his lover Simon, and you know what has drawn them together is that they care about other people. (Simon is a physical therapist who likes lecturing his clients; Wai-Tung tries to appear in charge, but he always seems to be taken advantage of by the people around him.) This concern for others is what draws us to Wai-Tung, and when his parents appear, you know exactly why he's going along with deceiving them.

Winston Chao is handsome and lithe, and he's good at playing a frazzled, bewildered, well-meaning lump. Yet he wouldn't be so likable, if it were not for the propinquity of Mitchell Lichtenstein who clearly has the expressiveness the movie needs. Although the movie comes dangerously close to being one about gay men in love who, in their most private moments, look like the most they do is shake hands, Lichtenstein ("Streamers") manages with the subtlest means to convey a sexual connection. The scene in which Simon presents a cell phone as a gift and carries on a conversation to test it affords Lichtenstein the chance to show what heat he can generate on the screen when he's called to do so. It makes evident how lucky a man Wai-Tung is, and why he'd allow himself to be emotionally torn for so long.

But the most compelling performances here come from Sihung Lung (who played the unwanted father-in-law in "Pushing Hands") and Ah Lei Gua as Mr. and Mrs. Gao. Lung conveys Old-World benevolence that pretty much dictates where this movie goes. He more than fills the shoes of the aging warrior, taking the last few steps that will make his life complete. He grants Mr. Gao a share of dignity his work here rightly deserves. Yet it is Ah Lei Gua who convinces me that she is fully in character. Whether she is bursting into tears over the shabbiness of the civil wedding, or trying to overlook her daughter-in-law's clumsiness in the kitchen, or keeping Simon at a distance when she learns his real position in her son's life, you sense an actress of the highest rank who knows intuitively the character she has been given to play.

With May Chin who, I hear, is very popular in Taiwan, and here carries herself with porcelain elegance. Her Wei-Wei is an enigma, a woman with a penchant for handsome gay men, and the movie is content with leaving her that way. You come away as uneasy about the arrangement she struck with Simon and Wai-Tung as Mrs. Gao is, who exits weeping. When Ang Lee slows down the camera at the end, as Mr. Gao raises his arms to be inspected at the airport gate, the director in spite of himself belies the thought that the old soldier has surrendered to a new enemy--the craziness and the self-indulgence of the next generation. The plangency of that last shot remains with you for a long time.

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.

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.