The Wedding Banquet is a 1993 romantic comedy film directed by Ang Lee and starring Winston Chao, May Chin, Gua Ah-leh, Sihung Lung, and Mitchell Lichtenstein. The screenplay concerns 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 and he has to hide the truth of his partner. The Wedding Banquet is a co-production between Taiwan and the United States. Together with Pushing Hands and Eat Drink Man Woman, all made in Taiwan, all showing the Confucian family at risk, and all starring the Taiwanese actor Sihung Lung, it forms what has been called Lee's "Father Knows Best" trilogy.
Plot
Wai-Tung Gao and Simon are a happy gay couple living in Manhattan. Wai-Tung is in his late 20s, so his traditionally-minded parents are eager to see him get married and have a child in order to continue the family line. When Wai-Tung's parents hire a dating service, he and Simon stall for time by inventing impossible demands. They demand an opera singer and add that she must be 5'9", have two PhDs, and speak five languages. The service actually locates a 5'8" Chinese woman who sings Western opera, speaks five languages and has a single PhD. She is very gracious when Wai-Tung explains his dilemma, as she, too, is hiding a relationship. At Simon's insistence, Wai-Tung decides to marry one of his tenants, Wei-Wei, a penniless artist from mainland China in need of a green card. Besides helping Wei-Wei, Simon and Wai-Tung hope that this will placate Wai-Tung's parents. Before Wai-Tung's parents arrive, Simon tells Wei-Wei everything she needs to know about Wai-Tung's habits, body, and lifestyle, and the three take down all homosexual content from their house and replace it with traditional Chinese scrolls. Mr. and Mrs. Gao announce they will visit from Taiwan, bringing gifts and US$30,000 to hold an extravagant wedding for their son; believing he is involved with a high-class rich woman. Wai-Tung dares not tell his parents the truth, because his father, a retired officer in the Chinese Nationalist Army, has just recovered from a stroke. As a part of the lie, Wai-Tung introduces Simon as his landlord. A day after Wai-Tung's parents arrive, he announces that Wei-Wei and he are planning to get their marriage certificate at city hall. However, the heartbreak his mother experiences at the courthouse wedding prepares the story for a shift to drama. The only way to atone for the disgraceful wedding is a magnificent wedding banquet, offered by Mr. Gao's former driver in the army who now owns a restaurant and reception hall. After the banquet, several relatives come up to their hotel room for an unsolicited after-party and they demand that the newlyweds get in bed naked before they all leave. This leads to a drunk Wai-Tung having sex with an equally drunken Wei-Wei who becomes pregnant. Simon is extremely upset when he finds out, and his relationship with Wai-Tung begins to deteriorate. Shortly after, Mr. Gao has another stroke, and in a moment of anger, after a fight with both Simon and Wei-Wei, Wai-Tung admits the truth to his mother. She is shocked and insists that he not tell his father. However, the perceptive Mr. Gao has seen more than he is letting on; he secretly tells Simon that he knows about their relationships and, appreciating the considerable sacrifices he made for his biological son, takes Simon as his son as well. Simon accepts the Hongbao from Wai-Tung's father, a symbolic admission of their relationship. Mr. Gao seeks and receives Simon's promise not to tell his secret for without the sham marriage, he'd never have a grandchild. While en route to an appointment for an abortion, Wei-Wei decides to keep the baby, and asks Simon to stay together with Wai-Tung and be the baby's second father. In the final parting scene, as Wai-Tung's parents prepare to fly home, Mrs. Gao has forged an emotional bond to daughter-in-law Wei-Wei. Mr. Gao accepts Simon and warmly shakes his hand. In the end, both derive some happiness from the situation, and they walk off to board the aircraft, leaving the unconventional family to figure themselves out.
Cast
Winston Chao as Wai-Tung Gao
Gua Ah-leh as Mrs. Gao, Wei-Tung's mother
Sihung Lung as Mr. Gao, Wei-Tung's father
May Chin as Wei-Wei Gu
Mitchell Lichtenstein as Simon
* Simon is a tall American with blue eyes and blonde hair. He speaks broken Mandarin Chinese but is proficient in cooking Asian dishes. He is the only character in the movie who receives open prejudice for being gay.
approached director Ang Lee with the idea behind The Wedding Banquet in 1986 by revealing to Lee that one of their mutual friends had moved to the United States and was in a same-sex relationship without the knowledge of the man's parents. Lee and Peng began writing the screenplay two years later and were soon joined by James Schamus. In the published screenplay version of the film, Schamus wrote that the film was "first drafted in Chinese, then translated into English, re-written in English, translated back into Chinese, and eventually subtitled in Chinese and English and a dozen other languages." The script won a Taiwan state film competition in 1990. About 60% of the film is in Mandarin Chinese. Elisabetta Marino, author of "When East Meets West: A Sweet and Sour Encounter in Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet", wrote that "after striving to read the subtitles for the first ten or fifteen minutes, one finds oneself so completely absorbed in the flow of the story, in the tones of the several voices, in the gestures and the facial expressions of the actors, that one simply forgets to read and reaches an understanding beyond languages, beyond words, following a plot and, most of all, a set of characters who do not conform to the stereotypical portrayals an American audience would expect." Marino argued that "Lee’s creative process and his final choice of two languages, Mandarin Chinese and English, for the movie are in themselves symptomatic of his wish to reach a peaceful coexistence between apparently irreconcilable cultures, without conferring the leading role on either of them."
Reception
The Wedding Banquet received mostly positive reviews; on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ang Lee's funny and ultimately poignant comedy of manners reveals the filmmaker's skill across genres." Alan Jones of the Radio Times said, "Sharply observed and never once striking a false note, this sweet-and-sour rib-tickler is a real treat." Roger Ebert wrote, "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." The worldwide gross of The Wedding Banquet was $23.6 million. The New York Times reported a budget of $750,000. Considering the $1 million budget reported by Variety, the film was also the most financially profitable movie of 1993, when considered in terms of ratios of return, while overall top grosser Jurassic Park only earned a ratio of 13.8.
Analysis
Elisabetta Marino, author of "When East Meets West: A Sweet and Sour Encounter in Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet", wrote that the film suggests that there can be a reconciliation between Eastern and western cultures, unlike Amy Tan's novels where the cultural differences are portrayed as irreconcilable.
In December 1993, a novelization of the film, titled Wedding Banquet and published in Japan, was written by Yūji Konno. In 2003, the Village Theatre presented a musical staging of the story. 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.
