The Wedding Banquet (1993): Classic screwball comedy with an eastern twist
Ang Lee turns a gay Taiwanese immigrant's fears about disappointing his parents into a hilarious yet poignant farce.
Ang Lee, the Oscar winning director of Brokeback Mountain and Life Of Pi, was raised in both China and Taiwan by a family who placed a heavy emphasis on his education. They wished for him to become a professor, but after finishing his mandatory military service, Lee defied his family’s wishes and moved to the USA where he studied film at New York University. Given his background, it is hardly surprising that Lee’s films contain a hybrid of western and eastern sensibilities. His sophomore feature The Wedding Banquet is a perfect example of his ability to combine Hollywood storytelling with the social mores of his native China and Taiwan, as well as a deeply personal reflection of his own dual identity.
In the movie, Taiwanese immigrant Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) is a gay man living happily with his boyfriend Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) in New York City. Wai-Tung has not come out to his meddling parents (Gua Ah-leh and Lung Sihung), both of whom are obsessed with the idea of him settling down with a wife and starting a family. He fears that by telling his family he is gay he will bring shame upon them. His boyfriend Simon conceives of a harebrained scheme to solve his problems: They will organise a marriage for Wai-Tung and their unlucky-in-love friend Wei-Wei (May Chin), a penniless Chinese artist in need of a green card to stay in the USA. This will placate Wai-Tung's parents, they believe, whilst him and Simon can go on living together in peace. However, the plan backfires when Wai-Tung’s parents insist on coming to the USA to throw a lavish traditional wedding for the soon-to-be-wed couple.
The concept for The Wedding Banquet came from Taiwanese screenwriter and political activist Neil Peng. He told Ang Lee about a mutual friend who was in a same-sex relationship in the USA without the knowledge of his parents. The script was then developed by Lee and his longtime collaborator James Schamus. His and Lee’s writing takes inspiration from 1940s and 1950s Hollywood cinema. It has all the classic elements of a screwball comedy like Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot or Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living. There are non-stop hi-jinx once Wai-Tung’s parents arrive stateside and they must navigate an increasingly convoluted web of lies.
As a director, on the other hand, Lee appears to be drawing his inspiration from storytellers of the east, such as the intimate familial character studies of Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu like Tokyo Story or An Autumn Afternoon. Lee is extremely concerned with ensuring the audience feel Wai-Tung’s anxiety about dishonouring his mother and father. He also enables us to care about Simon, who becomes the architect of his own heartbreak, Wei-Wei, who realises the pain her lies are inflicting, and even Wai-Tung’s kind but misguided parents, who only want the best for their son. Lee directs the film with sensitivity and emotional intelligence.
Perhaps, for Ang Lee, the story of a man torn between his western lifestyle and the expectations of his eastern upbringing hits too close to home for it to simply be farce. The Wedding Banquet feels like an attempt to answer the highly personal question of whether you can ever find harmony between two seemingly irreconcilable cultures. The wonderful balance of western and eastern influences that Lee brings to the film proves that you can. The Wedding Banquet is not merely a funny screwball comedy, nor simply an effective family drama, but a remarkable marriage of both.
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Directed by Ang Lee. Written by Ang Lee, Neil Peng and James Schamus. Produced by Ang Lee, Ted Hope and James Schamus. Starring Gua Ah-leh, Lung Sihung, May Chin, Winston Chao and Mitchell Lichtenstein. Good Machine Productions. Distributed by Central Motion Picture Corporation and The Samuel Goldwyn Company. 106 minutes. Taiwan and United States.