Together with Pushing Hands (1991) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), all showing the Confucian family at risk, and all starring the Taiwanese actor Lung Sihung, The Wedding Banquet forms what has been called Lee's "Father Knows Best" trilogy.[4]
In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Gao Wai-Tung is a bisexualTaiwanese immigrant happily living in Manhattan with his gay Jewish partner Simon. He has not come out to his traditionally-minded parents who live back in Taiwan and, as he's in his late-20s, they've become eager to see him get married and have a child in order to continue the family line. When his parents hire a dating service, Wai-Tung and Simon stall for time by inventing numerous impossible demands. They demand an opera singer while requesting that she must be 5'9", have two PhDs, and speak five languages. To their shock, the service actually locates a 5'8" Chinese woman who meets all but one of their qualifications; but having only a single PhD instead of two. She is very gracious when Wai-Tung explains his dilemma, as she too is hiding a relationship with a white man from her parents.
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, the couple hope that this will placate Wai-Tung's parents. To complicate matters, Mr. and Mrs. Gao announce they will visit. Before the parents arrive, Simon tells Wei-Wei everything she needs to know about Wai-Tung's habits, body, and lifestyle; and the three hastily take down all gay imagery and décor from the house and hang Mandarin calligraphy scrolls in its place.
Mr. and Mrs. Gao arrive bringing gifts and US$30,000 to hold an extravagant wedding for their son, believing he has a wealthy fiancée. Wai-Tung dares not tell his parents the truth, because his father (a retired army officer) has just recovered from a stroke. As a part of the lie, Wai-Tung introduces Simon as his landlord.
The day after his parents arrive, Wai-Tung announces that he and Wei-Wei plan to be married by a Justice of the Peace. However, the heartbreak his mother experiences at the courthouse wedding, both at the arrangement and at the discovery of the low social class of Wei-Wei, moves Wai-Tung to make up for the 'disgraceful' wedding by accepting the offer of a magnificent wedding banquet from Mr. Gao's former batman, who now owns a restaurant and reception hall. After the lavish banquet, a huge party of relatives and friends barges into the bridal suite for an after party and demand that the newlyweds get in bed naked before they will leave. This leads to Wei-Wei's pregnancy. Simon is extremely upset when he finds out, provoking an argument between the two of them and Wei-Wei, and his relationship with Wai-Tung begins to deteriorate.
Mr. Gao suffers another stroke, and in a moment of anger after the fight, 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, and tells Simon that he knows about their relationship and considers Simon his son as well, appreciating the considerable sacrifices he made to be together with Wei-Tung. Mr. Gao gives Simon a hongbao, a symbolic admission of their relationship, but has Simon promise not to let on to the others that he knows the truth; saying that 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 father too.
At the airport before the Gaos' flight home, Mr. Gao accepts Simon and warmly shakes his hand and Mrs. Gao bids Wei-Wei a fond farewell before they walk off to board their plane; leaving the unconventional new family to figure themselves out.
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 in Amy Tan's novels where the cultural differences are portrayed as irreconcilable.[5]
About 60% of the film's dialogue is in Mandarin Chinese.[citation needed] Marino 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."[5]
Production
Development and writing
Neil Peng 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.[citation needed] 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.[6]
Casting
The Wedding Banquet was the debut film of Winston Chao, whom Ang Lee met on an airline where he was working as a flight attendant. Chao, who had no formal acting training, was reticent to take the part, until Lee agreed to coach him with an acting instructor of his choosing. Chao spent three-to-four hours each day before and during filming in in-depth rehearsals.
The Wedding Banquet received 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."[7] 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."[8]
The worldwide gross of The Wedding Banquet was $23.6 million. The New York Times reported a budget of $750,000.[9] 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 ($914 million earnings on a $60 million budget).[2]
In December 1993, a novelization of the film, titled Wedding Banquet (ウェディングバンケット, Wedingu Banketto) and published in Japan, was written by Yūji Konno (今野 雄二, Konno Yūji). (ISBN4-8387-0508-5)[13]
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.[14]
