THE WEDDING BANQUET
Kathleen Norris on THE WEDDING BANQUET
I found The Wedding Banquet to be full of pleasant surprises. Loving Ang Lee’s 1993 film of the same name, I wasn’t sure about a remake, but I needn’t have worried. The 2025 film adroitly addresses the vast changes in American society that have occurred in the intervening years, particularly as they relate to gay people, who are now much more free to live outside the closet, and to marry one another.
The trailer for the new film made it look like an unabashed, all-out comedy, and I was relieved to find that while there are brilliant comic moments and a few laugh-out-loud lines, the new film is much more thoughtful than I expected. It goes deep into the complexity of human relationships in ways that has kept the movie in my mind long after viewing it.
My third surprise is that the film essentially has six leads. Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran portray Lee and Angela, a couple who rent the basement/garage of their Seattle home to two friends, a gay male couple Chris and Min (Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan). The other main characters are Angela’s mother and Min’s grandmother. As each is a fully developed character, allowed to reveal themselves in surprising ways, we get to know and care about them. It’s a joy to observe the younger people shed much of their anxious self-absorption, make mistakes and then make up for them, growing into adults who can commit to serious relationships. They’re full of the flaws and contradictions that define the human condition but also help us learn to better connect with those we love. And it’s a joy to watch the older women adapt to change in ways that enhance their ability to love.
My ultimate joy is in the character of the grandmother, who despite the vigor of the younger actors (and the star power of Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang) is the heart of the film. Portrayed by veteran actor Youn Yuh-jung, who won an Oscar for her role in 2020’s Minari, she transforms before our eyes from a stereotypical conservative Korean grandmother into a woman who fully understands that love is love, and that it’s not too late to set her grandson free from unfair expectations. She and her grandson have one scene that made me want to stand up and cheer.
Lee and Angela are engaged in noble work; Lee as an indigenous community organizer, and Angela as a scientist researching ways to remove plastic residue from the environment. Lee’s second attempt to become pregnant through IVF has failed and the women lack the money to try again. We sense that Angela takes Lee’s placid nature for granted; it allows her to be more open about expressing anger over her mother’s newfound celebrity as a local hero in the PFLAG movement. When circumstances cause Lee to finally blow up and storm out of their house, it’s a revelation to both women and an important step forward in their relationship.
Chris and Min are more or less adrift, Chris on an extended hiatus from seeking a degree in gender studies and a bit reluctant to commit to Min, a student from Korea, who is making art and growing anxious as his visa is about to expire. We first meet his grandmother on a video screen in a stark meeting room of the family’s large, multinational corporation. She has summoned Min there to discuss his future, and sternly explains that while the family has allowed him several years to explore art, he’s now expected to return to Korea and take his place in the family business.
Chaos ensues as the couples explore their options. Should Min marry Chris, the love of his life, obtain a green card, and lose his inheritance? But if he and Angela marry instead, and enter a sham relationship that would please Min’s conservative family, Min can provide Lee with the funds for another attempt to become pregnant. The deception of a gay man’s conventional Asian family is also a theme in the original film, and an elaborate, raucous wedding banquet that takes place after a city hall wedding is the center of that film.
This film is quieter; a traditional Korean wedding ceremony is staged and filmed to please Min’s grandfather, who is too ill to make the journey from Korea. But this time the grandmother is in on the scheme, although she’s startled to find that Angela has become pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with Chris.
She can handle it; one senses that she can handle anything. As the young couples struggle to make sense of their lives, the two older women anchor the film. Joan Chen is hilarious as May, whose public support of her daughter’s homosexuality has left Angela feeling that her mother hasn’t really seen or understood her. Her bitter confrontation with May might have ruined their relationship, but instead it’s given May room to prove herself as a mother who cares deeply about her daughter. She’s there when Angela needs her most.
A similar and beautiful thing happens with Ja-Young, Min’s grandmother, who proves to be much more than the stern, suspicious woman admonishing her grandson on a video screen. As she walks around Min’s workspace, admiring the lovely art he’s made out of a variety of textiles, she opens herself up to him in a way that we sense surprises even her. (Watching the changing expressions on Youn Yuh-jung’s face constitutes a master class in acting.) She begins to talk about how, as a young woman, she was forced to marry a wealthy man she did not love and pretend that all was well. Now that she has the chance to liberate her grandson to live his life as he sees fit, she will see to it that he has the freedom she never had.
As with the first film, we come to understand that our best families are often the ones we choose for ourselves. This is perhaps especially true for gay people who often face rejection from their families of birth. The film’s ending elicited gentle laughter in the audience when I saw the film. We’ve seen Angela and Chris learn to temper their volatile personalities, perhaps discovering that their real anger is with themselves and not those closest to them. Min and Lee have learned to express their needs and expectations more clearly and openly. We’re left with the hope that these couples have matured into people who can be good parents to their babies. And yes, there are two of them.
The Wedding Banquet, 2025, Andrew Ahn, director; written by Ahn and James Schamus. Currently in theaters. I find it a scandal that Ang Lee’s fine 1993 film (written by Lee, Neil Peng, and James Schamus) is not available for streaming.
Gareth Higgins’ THREE THINGS
I’ve been thinking about The Two Jakes, the sequel to the iconic noir thriller Chinatown. It’s full of grief and disappointment, but it’s a tender surprise to discover that its title characters are motivated by love. The Two Jakes doesn’t have a great reputation - frankly, it’s so rarely talked about that it doesn’t really have a reputation at all. But this film, directed by Jack Nicholson, is actually a meaningful coda to one of the one of the most powerful, challenging, and painful American films.
It led me think more about regret, given that Nicholson’s character JJ Gittes is consumed with remorse for a terrible mistake he once made. The primary mistake was to believe in his self-propaganda, rooted in blind misogyny, the certainty that he was always right.
Jung apparently said that the future depends on how many people are able to hold the tension of opposites, which must include becoming curious about what I don’t know. Jung also encouraged a kind of healthy unavailability - not a rejection of others, but one that calls forth the initiation of a truly integrated personhood by inviting people to discover their own emotional maturity. A circular experience (and an ever-widening circle) of self-reflection in dialogue with the assertion of enlightened, loving (sometimes tough-loving) boundaries.