The tragicomedy “The Wedding Bankett” marked the international breakthrough of the Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee (“Tiger & Dragon”) in 1993. After his already fully charming, but largely unnoticed debut “pushing hands” in the west, Lee's second directorial work celebrates her world premiere in the Berlinale competition, where she was awarded the golden bear for the best film. The international triumphal march then continued up to an Oscar nomination for the best foreign language film. At the time, “The Wedding Bankett” was a film that seemed to come simply: a multicultural gay love story, tells as a confusion and deception comedy, which, as a family and generational drama, also reminds of the Japanese grandmaster Ozu Yasujirō (“Journey to Tokyo”).
Lee told about the New York exile-Taiwaner Wai unit, who has lived in a relationship with the American Simon for years, far away from his conservative family. However, since his parents are increasingly pressing him to an arranged marriage, Waiung decides to a fake marriage with the central artist Wei-Wei-Wei, who, in turn, promises the longed-for access to a green card from the arrangement. Undoubtedly a story from the early 1990s, when queer lifestyles in the cinema stream went through as a novelty-and were also happy to be prepared in bourgeois-harmlessly in order to pick up the more bourgeois but well-willing audience where it was still.
Instead of a hetero shine, this time there are two queer couples who try to solve their (sometimes self-made) problems together.
A remake of Ang Lees Queer-Cinema classic for the presence of 2025 is a challenge in any case, because a lot has changed in the three decades since then. Homosexual marriage is now possible in most (western) countries, and homosexual ways of life have become much natural part of everyday life and also its medial representations – even if these achievements are under fire in view of the social laws that we have to observe everywhere. The plot meanders of Ang Lee's template are no longer to be re -enacted in the same form – they look too much as a narrative from a different time. Fortunately, Andrew Ahn, the director of the new edition “The Wedding Banquet“, Who got to the side for the adaptation of the more than 30-year-old fabric with James Schamus to the co-authors of the original script.
Keeping the bitter -sweet tone of Lee's film and still telling a contemporary story seems to have been the goal of director Ahn – and that succeeds surprisingly well. The prerequisite for this is the courage to tell everything differently. This begins with the fact that there are two friendly homosexual couples whose stories whisk the central deception. The constellation around the Korean Min (Han Gi-Chan) and his Asian-American partner Chris (Bowen Yang) is more or less taken from the template. The figure of the heterosexual subtenant, who is more or less secretly in love with the gay protagonists and tries to use the fake marriage to “conversion”, really doesn't need any more in 2025. Instead, the lesbian couple Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) comes into play here-the best friends of Min and Chris, a team of four as a queer election family …
A lot has changed in 30 years
Lee and Angela have already failed twice to continue using artificial fertilization, and they lack the money for a third attempt. In turn, min has enough of this, which is why the central point of action of the fake marriage comes back into play. (The fact that there is viable alternatives to clinical fertilization in a gay-lesbian community is later suitable for some comedic excitement and a not completely unexpected twist, but does not matter at first and certainly represents the largest logic hole from “The Wedding Banquet”.)
However, the central joke of this new adaptation is that the relationships with the parents generations hardly prove to be the real problem here: While the Korean grandmother (YOUN YUH-JUNG) is traditionally aware of it, but it quickly looks through the Scharade and accepts it, Angela's mother May (Joan Chen) stages as a showcase ally and (over) compensates for its own, perhaps a bit to demonstrative Overcome earlier homophobia, which her Angela never completely forgiven.
After her earlier homophobia, Mother May (Joan Chen) is now staging a little too obviously as a queer ally.
The disapproving of the neighbors, who were still exposed to Wai and Simon in 1993, no longer play a role in ancestor. A self -confident, self -confident homosexual life is possible and no longer has to (or not yet again?) Sturdy and fight. And yet not all of the problems are solved between the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” tolerance of the grandmothers and Pride-activist overcompensation of the mothers generation. Because the obstacles create the thirtysometening quipsters in “The Wedding Banquet” all by itself: from the gay fear of attachment to the bumpers at the lesbian rainbow family to the-oh god-full-drunk heterose jump.
When it comes to point of pointing, “The Wedding Banquet” could sometimes get a little more lively, but you always like to see this remake. On the one hand, this is due to the excellent ensemble, which all of these figures as sympathetic and emotional (reasonably) complex people bring us out of life from which Kelly Marie Tran (“Star Wars 9”) protrudes. Her Angela is so balanced between neurotic high -comedy and a grounded credibility that it looks like the emotional anchor of the whole event – primarily in contrast to the over -mother Joan Chen.
Conclusion: Andrew Ange Remake by Ang Lees Multicultural Queer-Cinema Tagicomedy, the balancing act between respect for the classic template and absolutely necessary update is quite good. The pendulum between the drama and comedy now, more than 30 years later, strikes more funny, but none of the characters will become the mere caricature of themselves. “The Wedding Banquet” could sometimes be a bit more lively, but overall it convinces as an adaptation of a classic as well as a charming, queer and rather contemporary ensemble.