Remake of The Wedding Banquet takes stock of changing family values
THE WEDDING BANQUET
★★★
M, 104 minutes, in cinemas
If the cliche 'ahead of its time' means anything, it applies to Ang Lee's calmly unconventional romantic comedy The Wedding Banquet, which became an international arthouse hit in 1993, reinventing traditional notions of family ties well before same-sex marriage was on the mainstream political agenda in the US or anywhere else.
Taking stock of how much has changed since appears to be one of the goals of this remake, from the Korean-American director Andrew Ahn (who personally identifies as gay, unlike Lee, a chameleon whose later hits range from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon to Brokeback Mountain).
Beyond a few key plot moves the two films outwardly don't have much in common, although Lee's regular collaborator James Schamus co-wrote both scripts. The setting has shifted from Manhattan to Seattle, where the scientist heroine Angela (Kelly Marie Chen from The Last Jedi) works in a laboratory studying plastic-eating worms, a position well-suited to her withdrawn temperament.
Many of Angela's neuroses are bound up with her overbearing mother May (Joan Chen), but the problem isn't that May disapproves of Angela's girlfriend Lee (Lily Gladstone). If anything she's more supportive than she needs to be: in the opening scene she's even presented with an 'ally' award, much to her daughter's disgust.
Living out the back of Angela and Lee's place are a second couple: Angela's old friend Chris (Bowen Yang), and Chris' boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan) a Korean art student whose visa is about to run out. Min could get a green card if he married an American, but if he came out to his family he'd be disowned, and anyway Chris doesn't know if marriage is what he wants.
Lee, meanwhile, is desperate to become a mother, but her IVF treatment hasn't worked out. So the four of them hit on a plan that calls for Angela and Min to announce their engagement, leading Min's grandmother Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung) to fly to the US to meet the bride-to-be.
This is a broader, more straightforward crowd-pleaser than the first Wedding Banquet, which typically for Lee retained a degree of melancholy and reserve. Sometimes the characters are made to spell out their feelings all too bluntly; other complications are raised only to be steered away from, like the fact that Angela, unlike Lee, doesn't seem to want a baby at all.
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