The Wedding Banquet

The Wedding Banquet

            Ang Lee is a Taiwanese director that is highly celebrated not only in his country but all over the world as well. His films are quite Americanized for the reason that Lee moved to the United States of America to study film and theater. He achieved his BA in Theater at the University of Illinois, and then furthermore he achieved his MFA in Film Production at NYU. Beforehand, Lee was raised in Taiwan and attended the military service as a mandatory requirement in his country.

The movie “The Wedding Banquet” is based on a story about a Taiwanese young man that comes from a very strict and traditional family. His family believes in customs, rituals, and is accustomed to a heterosexual way of life. However it just happens that the son of this family, Wai-Tung Gao, is born a homosexual. Gao feels that his homosexuality will displease his parents and furthermore chase them away, thus he decided to keep his sexual orientation to himself. Once he became an older man, Gao immigrated to the United States of America where he met and fell in love with Simon. Simon is an American man, around the same age as Gao. He is also gay and the two are so deeply in love that they share an apartment together.

Gao is extremely happy the way things are going except for the fact that his parents are pushing him to get married because he is getting older by the minute and time is running out. They even made him fill out a form on how he “prefers his women”, and then went on to find him a woman similar to his liking. Almost in the beginning of the film Gao goes on an obliged date with a woman that he had no interest in. his family sent her over to him in hopes that he would fall in love with her and they would get married and have children. But that was not the case.

            In order to calm his parents down, Gao came to an agreement with one of his tenants, Wei-Wei, to marry her so that she can acquire a green card, and so that his parents can be satisfied with his marriage. However, his parents were so excited that they flew in from Taiwan to visit Gao and to attend his wedding. The movie then proceeds into a crazy marital journey from this point on.

Personally, I enjoyed this film, although it was a bit dragged on at times. I like the fact that we get a point of view of what a homosexual goes through when he or she feels ashamed of their sexual orientation, although they should not have to ever feel that way. I also enjoyed the comedic aspect of the film; I found myself laughing a lot. Overall I rate the movie a B+.