The Wedding Banquet (1993)
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The Wedding Banquet Movie Review
The Wedding Banquet is a 1993 Taiwanese romantic comedy film directed by Ang Lee and starring Winston Chao. It’s such an endearing, superbly written movie.
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“For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer…
Better and richer, no poorer“
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To satisfy his nagging parents, a gay landlord and a female tenant agree to a marriage of convenience, but his parents arrive to visit and things get out of hand. Exploring the clash between the cultures of East and West but also the clash between modernity and traditionalism, this film has a simple, but powerful message about the reconciliation of the two and that it is actually possible despite all seemingly insurmountable odds.
Ang Lee is one of the best directors of all time and certainly one of my absolute favorites. This film coming in early at his career proved that he was amazing from the start. He was always very diverse in terms of genres, but here he tackled the romantic comedy with a surprising amount of mastery. I am usually not a fan of this genre, but even I adored this one and that is all due to his impressive direction and also writing as he co-wrote the script, which is the film’s biggest strength.
Nothing here seemed stereotypical, neither the plot nor the characters. Everything was believable and even the melodramatic, maybe overly happy ending worked because even this section had a lot of nuance to it. The movie depicts the numerous traditions of Chinese weddings with a lot of believability and authenticity while all the family interactions rang true.
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Winston Chao is very good as Wai-Tung and he is the best developed character in the movie along with the complex and very endearing Wei-Wei. They entered this arranged marriage for very wrong reasons – him to appease his parents and her to stay legally in the country. The movie’s final act emphasized on this fact by acknowledging that they made a mistake due to their selfishness. The film is all about being selfless, but also true to yourself, which was a wonderful sentiment.
Simon is also quite memorable and a lot of fun as the more cool and energetic part of this gay relationship. It was inspiring that Ang Lee depicted this very unstereotypical gay relationship in the early nineties no less, and he deserves much more credit for that. The movie needed a bit more focus on their relationship, but still they were great.
I loved everything that they did with the parents. That was all fantastic and deeply inspirational. In a twist that I did not see coming, the father realized everything on his own and he was okay with it much more than his wife who was much more hurt by the revelation. The film depicts the parents in a positive light, but also realistically as it is unreasonable to expect from them to instantly accept their gay son. The highlight was the beautiful relationship between Wei-Wei and the mother, which was so touching at times.
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The Wedding Banquet is definitely a comedy at its core, and the humor here is surprisingly terrific. I laughed more than a couple of times with my personal favorite scene being Wei-Wei butchering the wedding ceremony’s vows in a truly hilarious fashion. The film’s script and dialogue are clever, thus the humorous situational comedy beats were very charming and amusing. The technical aspects are also solid, though nothing special.
