[Rating: Solid Rock Fist Up]
As an avid fan of Ru Paul’s Drag Race, the titular queen of drag always reminds contestants and viewers about the importance of chosen family. Chosen family is so important to keep relationships and personal mentality always within reach of those who can champion you. Friends will always be there for you in the hard times and laugh and cry with you when you need it most.
Director Andrew Ahn’s latest film The Wedding Banquet takes a look at a chosen family and all of the shenanigans it takes to come to terms with identity and love.
Based on the 1993 film of the same name, The Wedding Banquet is about a group of four friends living in Seattle within the same property. Angela Chen (Kelly Marie Tran) lives with her partner Lee (Lily Gladstone) in Lee’s home. Angela and Lee go through the trials and tribulations of IVF in order to start the family that they have both dreamed of.
Angela’s mother May (Joan Chen) is a leader within her PFLAG community, and more or less uses Angela’s life as a lesbian to further her causes. In the garage of Lee’s house live Chris (Bowen Yang), Angela’s bestie from college and his partner Min (Han Gi-chan).
Min is on a work visa and discovers from his grandmother Ja-Young (Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung) that it is time to join the family business, unless he wants to lose his money and his visa.
So, Min decides to propose to Chris but is rejected because Chris feels it is too convenient that grandma said he’s about to lose his visa. Lee and Min then hatch a plan to “marry” Angela in the hopes grandma can approve, give Min his money and therefore help him stay in the country and give Angela and Lee a chance to pay for more rounds of IVF. The plan could work, if it wasn’t for grandma’s surprise visit and insistence that there be a traditional Korean wedding.
The Wedding Banquet is one of the best queer-themed films in a while.
This group of four friends are all there for one another when this crazy idea of marriage amongst the four comes into play. Even grandma notices the love and friendship of the group is so strong that she cannot even dissuade them from any of their decisions. I personally felt so close to the characters of Chris and Angela whose identities of “who am I” and “what do I need to be” felt really close to home.
As for the (stacked) cast, they’re all perfect in this film. I loved how Gladstone has many quiet moments to just sit and reflect over all that’s happening, and even Yang finally proves to me that maybe he can do dramatic pieces!
This film is very loving. The four main characters here all have their own personal issues that they have to lean on each other to help solve and in turn, find out more about themselves as a big happy family. What’s not to like?
Christian Ramos is a classic film fan, having had the dream to host Turner Classic Movies for years now. He also has a large amount of Oscar trivia in his head, remembers dressing as Groucho Marx one Halloween, and cherishes the moment Julianne Moore liked his tweet.
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