This article was originally posted via the DIASPORA NEWSLETTER on January 28, 2025. Subscribe here. The Wedding Banquet opens in theaters on April 18.
The Wedding Banquet premiered at Sundance on January 27. My Bluesky/Letterboxd reaction to the film was the following:
Andrew Ahn honors the original with this modern redux filled with queer love and joy while mindfully layering healing energy for generational trauma. Everyone is gonna fall in love with Han Gi-chan. Lily Gladstone soars. Yuh-jung Youn is a force. Joan Chen is an icon.
It’s been a minute since I have seen Ang Lee’s 1993 original of the same name, but from what I remember, the vibe is the same, but Andrew Ahn (who co-wrote the screenplay with James Schamus, who also co-wrote the original with Lee) modernizes it with care and humility — so much so that it made me question my own life as a single gay man who took a blood oath to use Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Woman Part I” as my anthem.
The teaser for The Wedding Banquet is cute — and I don’t say that in a patronizing way. Framing it as a comedy of errors captures the film’s funny and queerness in under two minutes. It also says: “… it happens to be Asian too!”
On the surface, it’s giving Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? meets The Birdcage energy iced with a Touch of Pink. What impressed me most about the film — without spoiling anything — is how Ahn managed to stay on course with traditional beats that are expected but tweaks them just enough to make it simultaneously modern and timeless.
The film doesn’t have a “huge coming out” moment nor does it interrogate Asian American identity. It is upfront about all of it and there is no “devastating trauma” to unpack. It’s just people living their lives. As I mentioned, it’s healing.
It’s…
…wholesome.
There’s a part of me that rejects wholesomeness. It’s the thug in me.
Just kidding.
While watching The Wedding Banquet, I watched the couples of Chris (Bowen Yang) & Min (Han Gi-chan) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) & Lee (Lily Gladstone) celebrate their queerness and love while just living a life without having to explain how they live their lives. Well, at least until Grandma gets there. But even that is done with panache.
Like many queer folks, I was raised in a loving family, but in a world that rejected anything queer or different. There was a stringent definition of what a man was and the world subscribed to a binary. Unfortunately, that world influences families — mine included. It’s all good now, but back in the Stone Age, it wasn’t fun.
I always wonder how seeing a movie like The Wedding Banquet when I was younger might have influenced my life. I wonder how an open, young queer Dino would have taken away from a movie where I saw two Asian men just being in love. I think it would have made me more inclined to fall in love.
So often, many queer people are told at a young age and raised on the belief that queer love is unacceptable and wrong. We are told we don’t deserve love. After a while, you start to believe that. Trying to unlearn decades of self-hatred requires lots of soul-searching.. and therapy… and weed.
That being said, my heart grew three sizes seeing the queer joy and love that Ahn so beautifully highlighted in the movie. But more than that, I sobbed at scenes with the powerhouse that is Oscar-winning actress Youn Yuh-Jung; scenes that are a thoughtful and even-handed illustration of bridging generational gaps and chasms of trauma in the Asian American diaspora — specifically with queer Asians.
I would have been more confident with my authentic self if I had been able to watch more queer love stories when I was younger. I never had the opportunity to see what was possible for me through a queer lens. It was always through a “normal” lens. However, I am happy that this and hopefully future queer generations have the opportunity — despite the world on fire around us — to live their lives with an authenticity that only grows stronger.
Ahn created a special film that has the soul of indie filmmaking from the ‘90s and early ‘00s. He also continues to keep LGBTQ narratives alive in the Asian American diaspora. For me, The Wedding Bandquet represents a future of love that young little Dino could look forward to.
There is a moment in every Drag Race finale where RuPaul asks “What would you say to 5-year-old Dino?”
This article is very that. Tears and all.
