The Wedding Banquet

Ang Lee, Taiwan/USA 1993, 108 minutes

Manhattan real estate owner and US citizen Gao Wai-Tung is under pressure from his elderly parents in Taiwan to get married so he arranges a marriage of convenience with one of his tenants, Wei-Wei, who is desperate for a green card. When Wai-Tung's parents decide to fly over for the wedding the small discreet ceremony the couple had planned becomes a huge feast and a drunken orgy. The build-up and aftermath of the banquet threaten the stability of Wai-Tung's relationship with his Caucasian lover Simon. For Wai-Tung is gay and under no circumstances can his parents find out.

Based on a true story The Wedding Banquet has been likened to Strictly Ballroom for its feel-good, crowd-pleasing effect but the comparison is not fair on the former. While Strictly Ballroom relied on raucous in-your-face Antipodean comedy, The Wedding Banquet is far more subtle with its humour and has a far deeper emotional complexity. The characters are well thought out (and well portrayed) with background depth to give reasons for their motives. For example Mr Gao was a KMT general in the civil war of the `40s who saw his family massacred and therefore is understandably desperate to see a grandchild of his own. If I told you that the fake marriage could be read as a parody of China/Taiwan relations I might put you off, so I won't.

Like Wayne Wang's Eat A Bowl Of Tea, The Wedding Banquet examines specifically Chinese cultural issues such as sexual fidelity, and peer group as well as paternal pressure to procreate; but unlike Wang's film here these issues are coupled with an invective against Chinese (or indeed any culture's) homophobia. The result is a film that is extremely funny, sensitive and at times genuinely moving. See this film; if you don't like it you need therapy

"slides down easily... [a] slickly mounted Gothan comedy" - Variety

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97