The Wedding Banquet

The Wedding Banquet was a great movie, which brought purpose and reality to the spectators viewing experience. Although, “The Wedding Banquet” may be a bit extreme for a real life situation, it involves family, comedy, sexuality and love, all of which are necessities for the complete fulfilling life.

Directed by acclaimed director Ang Lee, “The Wedding Banquet” was released in 1993 and received numerous awards most notably “ Best Foreign Film” in the Golden Globes as well as in the Oscars. Ang Lee also directed “Brokeback Mountain” another gay themed film that received Oscar nods.

The film stars Winston Chao as Wei-Tung Gao, Mitchell Litchenstein as Simon and May Chin as Wei-Wei. “The Wedding Banquet” has dialogue in Mandarin as well as English, which compliments the versatility of the Chinese actors.

Wai and Simon are two lovers trying to make ends meet in the pricey, competitive city of New York. Back at home Wai’s parents are adamant about finding him a spouse to wed and have children with.  They are unaware of his homosexuality. Wai’s parents send him request forms to fill out so they can be as accurate as possible when choosing a spouse. When all attempts fail, Wai and Simon decide to involve a tenant (Wei-Wei) in the scheme who wants to marry an American citizen so she can receive her green card; she is also attracted to Wai. Made unaware to his parents, Wai and Simon set up a scheme to introduce Wei-Wei as his love interest. To Wai’s shock his parents decide to make the trip to New York from China to arrange the Wedding.

When Mr. and Mrs. Gao (Wai’s parents) get to the home, Simon introduces himself as the landlord and good friend of Wai. They decide to wed at city hall, which actually was preferred by Wai and Simon. After the wedding Wai thought his parents would go back to China and he could continue on with his life, as he knew it. But at a dinner that night, Wai meets a friend of his fathers who is so grateful for what his father has done for him that he decides to repay him by throwing his son (Wai) a wedding banquet; much to Wai’s disapproval. At the wedding banquet, Wai accidentally impregnates Wei-Wei. When Simon finds this out he is very upset. His father is ailing but desperately wants a grandson. Simon and Wai’s relationship is on the ropes until Wei breaks the news to his mom about his sexuality. Eventually Simon and Wai reconcile and acknowledge the baby and Wei-Wei as a part of their family. The only concern left was telling Wai’s father. No need he already knew, his gracefulness and wisdom along with the knowledge of his sons heart allowed him to see that he wasn’t truly happy with Wei-Wei, from there it was just putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

“The Wedding Banquet” was a great movie. There wasn’t really a specific look or score that had a real effect on the movie. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as colorful as most Chinese themes films, which could be because it took place in NY or because it’s just not Ang Lee’s style. I really enjoyed the movie and I definitely understand why it is condemned a foreign classic.