The Wedding Banquet Review!!!
SYNOPSIS: To satisfy his traditional parents, Wai-Tung decides to marry a female tenant instead of coming out as gay and partnered to them. The sham includes a wedding and the accompanying events. But when Wei-Wei becomes pregnant, Simon-Wai-Tung's boyfriend-starts to become unhinged and the entire facade falls apart.
SYNOPSIS: Directed by Ang Lee (the man most currently known for Brokeback Mountain) in 1993, The Wedding Banquet is an interesting spin on the tried and true coming out story. Well, it's not exactly a coming out story, but it has many of the same elements: a gay child trying to hide their homosexuality from their parents; a facade, lark or lie to throw the parents off the track involving a female; lots of consternation by the gay partner about the entire ordeal; a mutual understanding between two or more of the parties; and a hopeful ending.
Sound familiar?
What sets this film apart from other coming out stories-and indeed from its 1993 breathern Philadelphia is that over 75% of this film is spoken in Chinese with no subtitles. It forces the audience to watch the reactions and movements of the people involved to understand what is going on. It also gives English speaking people the chance to understand what it must be like for people who do not speak the language to be in our country as Wai-Tung's parents don't. This is simultaneously a selling point and a major distraction for mainstream audiences. After all, most art films attract a certain type of person: the movie goer who is willing to take risks with their films. This is definately a risk. But the fact there is so little English was the death knell, commercially, for The Wedding Banquet. How do you promote this type of movie?
The foreign language does hurt the experience because none of the characters-in either language-are compelling enough to really care about. Maybe in 1993 before Queer as Folk, Brokeback Mountain, Trick and The Broken Hearts Club, this would have been groundbreaking. Now, though, it just feels like Ang Lee is trying not to go too far in rocking the boat.