
Andrew Ahn’s ‘The Wedding Banquet’ remake is delightful
Sundance premieres a brand-new telling of Ang Lee’s 1993 queer immigrant classic
From left, Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-Chan and Bowen Yang in "The Wedding Banquet."
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Words by Siddhant Adlakha
More than 30 years ago, Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet broke new ground as a Taiwanese-U.S. co-production steeped in frank depictions of queerness. Its comedic premise concerned a same-sex couple, New York-born Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) and Taiwanese immigrant Wai-Tung (Winston Chao), the latter of whom tries to please his visiting parents by putting on a sham marriage with his mainland Chinese tenant Wei-Wei (May Chin), who agrees to the ruse in exchange for a Green Card. Its plot is predicated on its characters’ closeted-ness, but re-telling the story today requires one eye towards the LGBTQ+ progress of the last three decades, and how the world has changed—not to mention, how it’s still changing.
This is where Andrew Ahn comes in. The Korean American filmmaker’s decade-long body of work—which includes Fire Island, a modern queer adaptation of Pride and Prejudice—centers the meeting point of contemporary gay and Asian American cultures with a gentle hand. Ahn doesn’t simply seek to re-tell Lee’s story. Rather, he re-fashions it into a riotous (and touching) comedy-drama that feels distinctly like a generational successor.
Its goals become apparent in the opening scene, set in an event hall that bears a striking resemblance to the one where Wai-Tung’s parents throw him a wedding banquet in the ’93 original. However, the austere tone of Lee’s film is immediately subverted, when what seems like a traditional lion dance explodes into a drag performance. Right from the word “go,” Ahn establishes a much more liberated premise, though it doesn’t come without complications.
This introductory event is to celebrate middle-aged queer ally May (Joan Chen, who was almost cast in Lee’s original), who speaks openly about supporting her lesbian daughter, the frumpy, reserved biologist Angela (Kelly Marie Tran), who happens to be present with her partner, self-assured queer organizer Lee (Lily Gladstone). However, Angela’s disgruntled reactions at May being given such a spotlight—and her claims of always having supported Angela’s identity—tell a different story: one in which May is overcompensating, for an acceptance hasn’t come easily.

Lily Gladstone as Lee and Kelly Marie Tran as Angela in "The Wedding Banquet."
Luka Cyprian Bleecker Street
Lee, who’s older than Angela, is also undergoing expensive IVF treatment so the couple can get pregnant, but the results aren’t promising, causing tensions about whether Angela should get pregnant instead. Meanwhile, Angela’s effeminate, gay best friend Chris (Bowen Yang)—the two were notably together in college before they figured out their sexualities—has relationship troubles of his own, when his rich, melodramatic South Korean immigrant boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan) hits a wall with his visa, and pops an ill-timed surprise proposal.
Min, like the original’s Wei-Wei, is an artist in need of a Green Card, but the zany solution here is a much less stable house of cards, involving complicated white lies that could unravel at any second. Chris doesn’t want to commit to Min, so instead, the quartet concocts an ill-advised plan, wherein Min will marry Lee so he can stay in the country, while providing her and Angela the funds to keep trying for a baby.
Instead of the visiting Taiwanese parents of Lee’s film, the plan in Ahn’s Seattle-set remake involves Min trying to fool his wealthy grandmother (Pachinko’s Youn Yuh-jung), believing that she’ll cut him off if she discovers his sexuality. While this similarity between the two versions might seem self-evident, Ahn’s broad comedy is buoyed by a nuanced approach to the generational (and cultural) differences around queer acceptance.

Joan Chen as May in "The Wedding Banquet."
Luka Cyprian Bleecker Street
Where Fire Island is similarly liberated in its depictions of queerness, his other movies—feature films like Spa Night and Driveways, and his short film Dol (First Birthday)—take a measured approach to his pristine vision of a more queer Asian America, wherein “utopian” isn’t an end-goal, but rather, the very act of striving towards something more perfect, and more understanding. Ahn’s remake of The Wedding Banquet splits the difference, with otherwise openly gay characters having to brush their lives under the rug in chaotically funny fashion, only to discover that their mothers and grandmothers are more complex and imperfectly human than they might have been willing to accept.
The four leads also have issues of their own that yield interpersonal drama. And while these are occasionally more spoken than felt—the dialogue harps on Angela and Chris’ avoidance of conflict, though the film rarely ruminates on this—the crisscrossing of their respective half-truths leads to wildly funny outcomes, which become increasingly convoluted as the film plays out. (Making things even more complicated is the fact that Chris and Min are Lee and Angela’s tenants, and have turned their shed into a guesthouse).
The differences between the two films are both generational and visual, in ways that go hand-in-hand. Directionally, Lee’s restrained compositions are replaced by Ahn’s more free-flowing approach. Additionally, the remake is a far cuter and cuddlier version than Lee’s simmering original, but that’s less of a bug and more of a feature. While no moment of sexual tension can hope to rival Wai-Tung and Wei-Wei’s sweat-drenched chemistry—few characters have ever looked more attractive on screen—Ahn’s comedy of errors is also not nearly as much about illicit or latent desires, so the characters are all much more at ease with each other’s bodies, laying around in socks, sweatpants and underwear together like they’ve hit a middle-aged lull.

Han Gi-Chan as Min and Bowen Yang as Chris in "The Wedding Banquet."
Luka Cyprian Bleecker Street
This sense of normalcy behind closed doors and with friends and family speaks to a sense of semi-closeted-ness, or a situational open-ness, where one’s identity is in flux depending on the situation—but it always feels transitional, as though it were en route to something wholly fearless and self-accepting. The tender difficulties of reaching that place have long been part of Ahn’s work, and they’re the comedic and dramatic driving force behind his version of The Wedding Banquet, which balances tongue-in-cheek soap opera with hilarious character dynamics that, even though they don’t work 100 percent of the time, are radiant enough to strike a chord.
The Wedding Banquet premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It releases in theaters April 18.
Published on January 31, 2025
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter