Where many recent LGBTQ+ rom-coms have crowbarred gay characters into heteronormative frameworks, this modern remake of The Wedding Banquet focuses on authentically queer themes, writes Miriam Balanescu.
In Andrew Ahn’s tender, contemporary reworking of the 1993 queer cult rom-com The Wedding Banquet, the path to happiness is by no means predictable. The gentle drama coaxes together not one couple, but two. It revolves around college best friends Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Chris (Bowen Yang), and their respective partners, who are each navigating what swapping late nights for settling down entails for them as queers: whether that be marriage, parenting, co-parenting, none or all of the above.
Ahn’s film follows a spate of queer rom-coms – mostly skewed towards male leads – which shook up the boy-meets-girl narratives that have long dominated cinematic history. 2022’s Bros was the first to be ushered in by a major studio, a story of two singletons who, falling in love, ditch their philandering ways. Single All the Way (2021), 2022’s Spoiler Alert (despite its unhappy ending) and Kristen Stewart’s Happiest Season (2020) put a festive spin on the light-hearted subgenre, and the likes of YA series Heartstopper (2022-2024) and Red, White & Royal Blue (2023) cemented the gay rom-com’s place in the mainstream.
While queer couples earning some of Hollywood’s ‘happily ever afters’ made for a refreshing change, how radical the narratives of these films are is another question. Plenty of them simply cut and paste storytelling beats from straight cinema. One such trope, used in Bros, sees merrily non-monogamous characters abandon their single lifestyles after they’re ground down into ending up with someone they initially loathe. As Noah (Joel Kim Booster), the protagonist of Ahn’s debut feature Fire Island (2022), proclaims: ‘Monogamy was invented by straight people to make us less interesting.’
Fire Island (2022)
Despite this disclaimer, though, Ahn’s queer cast of characters cannot resist the magnetic pull of the ‘monogamy industrial complex’ in Fire Island. Set at the titular gay vacation haunt, Ahn’s film is created in the mould of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813). Echoing the 19th-century novel’s famous opening line, the plot adheres to many of the same beats: Noah, who starts out adamantly avoiding love, soon succumbs to the allure of a handsome, but stuck-up, stranger. Critics reviewed Fire Island warmly, but some raised an eyebrow at the clichéd situations Ahn forces his characters into.
Transposing queer characters into straight storylines brings with it the risk of giving in to conventionality and ultimately misrepresenting what it means to be LGBTQ+. Queer culture has often pitted itself against the mainstream, making space for ways of living that do not conform to societal expectations, so, even as these films offer some representation, slotting queer characters into hackneyed heteronormative plots can feel jarring or inauthentic.
The Wedding Banquet (2025)
But Ahn’s sophomore feature steers clear of any tired tropes. Ang Lee’s original, from which Ahn takes the bare bones – while adding in a few wry nods – was notably released before gay marriage was made legal in the US. New York couple Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) and Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) hatch a plan to placate Wai-Tung’s parents in Taiwan (who are desperate for him to get married) and simultaneously help out Wai-Tung’s down-and-out tenant Wei-Wei (May Chin) with a green card: by staging a sham marriage. Lee’s film, especially in its heartrending wedding-album final sequence, gestures towards a future that is out of reach for the real couple at its centre, Wai-Tung and Simon.
In Ahn’s present-day version, things have moved on. Wai-Tung’s counterpart Min (Han Gi-chan) can legally marry his boyfriend, but the moseying art student still must contend with the fierce homophobia of his Korean grandfather. If he marries his partner Chris, he risks being cut off from his family’s fortune. If he doesn’t get married, and therefore does not get a green card, he risks worse: being deported.
The Wedding Banquet (1993)
However, Ahn repositions his lens to focus less on this pair’s plight and more on their female landlords whose garage they inhabit, the lesbian couple Angela and Lee (Lily Gladstone). They know for certain that the ‘institution’ of marriage does not appeal to them, and are undergoing IVF with a sperm donor. A few failed attempts in, their funds and their hope dwindles – so, Min suggests that he and Angela get married, and in exchange he will foot the bill for future rounds of IVF.
Where in Lee’s original Wai-Tung and Wei-Wei’s extravagant wedding banquet is arranged to please Wai-Tung’s father, Ahn opts to keep his homophobic patriarch off screen. Instead, Min’s steely grandmother Ja-Young (Minari’s Youn Yuh-jung) arrives in the US to handle proceedings. Despite the quartet’s efforts to de-clutter and de-queer their home, Ja-Young reveals from the off that she knows Min is gay. Another of Ahn’s sharp twists, combating stereotypes of unsupportive parents of queer children, is Angela’s spotlight-hogging mother May (Joan Chen). She has forged a reputation as an outspoken, award-winning (albeit slightly hypocritical) advocate for Seattle’s queer community, ironically ashamed that her daughter is marrying a man rather than a woman. Seeing these two matriarchs go head to head is a welcome departure from the 1993 film, and an update on the oft-male-dominated queer rom-com.
The Wedding Banquet (2025)
Though Wai-Tung and Simon’s ideal future together is out of reach, true love wins out for Chris and Min. Ahn’s reimagining also departs from the earlier film in its introduction of a co-parenting narrative, the kind that is rare to see on screen. In a dubious turn of events in Lee’s film, ultimately functioning to provide Wai-Tung’s parents with a grandchild, Wei-Wei becomes pregnant and is persuaded by Wai-Tung’s mother to raise the baby, thereby relinquishing her independence. Here, on the other hand, Angela’s unplanned pregnancy serves to help her work through issues with motherhood (the fault of her obnoxious mother May) and truly decide for herself that parenthood is for her.
Its more improbable events aside, the new Wedding Banquet settles on a refreshingly realist approach to the queer rom-com, apparent in its smaller details such as the regular, down-to-earth conversations its characters have with each other about their relationships, and in its overall emphasis on the importance of chosen family. Managing to unshackle itself from heteronormative frameworks, it is a uniquely nuanced depiction of queer characters working out how to build their lives – finally going beyond the idea that, for rom-com couples, marriage is the only outcome.
WATCH THE WEDDING BANQUET IN CINEMAS
