THE WEDDING BANQUET is a joyful, exuberant and fresh take on the romantic comedy genre featuring an acclaimed and hilarious cast of multigenerational talent. Based on Ang Lee’s award-winning 1993 film of the same name, Director Andrew Ahn (Fire Island, Driveways) reimagines THE WEDDING BANQUET to explore LGBTQIA+ problems of a new kind in the 21st century; overbearing parents, marriage and having children. Set in Seattle, the reimagining remains firmly rooted in the Asian American experience and explores the beauty of found family.
Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris (Bowen Yang), Min (Han Gi-Chan) makes a proposal: a green-card marriage with their friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) in exchange for her partner Lee’s (Lily Gladstone) expensive IVF. Their plans are upended, however, when Min’s grandmother surprises them with an extravagant Korean wedding banquet to celebrate their nuptials.
With The Wedding Banquet arriving in Australian cinemas on May 8, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s writer-director, Andrew Ahn, about honouring the original film while putting his own unique voice onto the story, and the power of film to put audience’s in different people’s perspectives.
Nick: Andrew, it’s such a pleasure to chat with you, today! I really loved this film, and how funny but heartfelt and human it is.
Andrew Ahn: Thank you! It’s so nice to be here.
Nick: I’d love to start by acknowledging that obviously this is a remake of an iconic Ang Lee film. So, I’m curious to know how you approached balancing honouring what made his original film so memorable, but then also putting your own unique voice on to the story?
Andrew Ahn: You know, it was a hard process, especially because the original film means so much to me. Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet was the first gay film that I ever saw! So, it put a lot of pressure on me to make this one great. I wanted it to feel really organic, and so much of my inspiration for the movie was the feelings and emotions that came up while watching the original film.
I had a meeting with the producers, and I re-watched the original as an adult, and like any great piece of art, it inspired so much feeling and memories, and good ideas! So I was able to use all of that inspiration from the original and marry that with my own personal insights. And when I watched the film back in 2019 while preparing for that meeting, I was in a phase of life where I was thinking a lot about queer family building, and marriage, and children, and so I used that phase of adulthood as a creative north start to guide me in this reimagining.
Nick: I think you can really feel that personal insight through the characters and the story, but you also manage to explore those themes with levity and humour. How important is it to also find that comedy within the dramatic human experience?
Andrew Ahn: And especially through love, right? I think love is extremely funny, and also heartbreaking and difficult. That’s what I love about the rom-com, is that is a balance of heart and humour. A difficult part of the filmmaking process is finding that in the screenwriting process, but then also finding it while directing, and then while editing. But I believe if you trust your taste and your instincts, and work with your collaborators, you end up with something that feels really organic and holistic to the spirit of the film.
Nick: There’s such an intimacy with the way you shoot your films. The camera always feels so close to the actors, so we feel every piece of emotion that they are conveying. But there is one scene in particular when Angela and Lee arrive home, and they’re having the first real discussion about starting a family, and you shoot it a bit further away, and it was the first time in the film that I felt a distance from the characters – like I wasn’t sure how they felt, and that reflects the themes of the scene so well. I’m curious to know how much of the visual style of the film is found in your writing, and how much it evolves as you talk about scenes with the actors?
Andrew Ahn: Oh, wow. Thank you! There’s something about a visual honesty that my cinematographer, Ki Jin Kim, and I are really interested in. It’s not wanting to impose an aesthetic on characters that doesn’t feel right for the moment, and I think in that particular moment that you mentioned, we wanted to show a kind of distance, because there is distance.
These characters are trying to understand each other, and I wanted to emphasise the dramatics of the scene, as opposed to force something onto it. And, you know, through the directing process there was a lot planning, but then also a lot of discovery on set that we were open to. If we were feeling a certain vibe, how could we accentuate that?
Nick: A film and story like The Wedding Banquet, I believe, is a great example of putting audiences into a world, and exploring characters, that feels real but is from a different perspective of life. And I think a lot of that lies in the power of art and cinema. What is your relationship with film and art, and the power it has to show audiences unique perspectives?
Andrew Ahn: There’s no medium out there that can show you a different perspective more powerfully than film, you know? Film does that so well because the camera is a literal lens that is the POV of life. I’ve watched so many films over the course of my lifetime that have taught me about different cultures, different moments in our lives, like birth and death – things that are hard to experience more than once ultimately!
There’s conflict that is too scary to deal with head on sometimes, and so you need a film to help you had more of a safe distance to explore and hopefully deal with in a healthier way. I really believe in the power of art and its ability to kind of give us a test run to prepare for the things in life that are more difficult.
Nick: The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and I know that’s been a prominent festival in your life, even back to when your short films played there. I’d love to know what the importance of Sundance, and just film festivals in general, has been life for you as filmmaker and film lover?
Andrew Ahn: I love film festivals because I think making art in general, but film very specifically, it can feel like a daunting solo adventure. It’s very isolating as you dream up an idea, as you write a film. And so, film festivals give you the opportunity to connect with an audience, to connect with other filmmakers, and feel less alone. It inspires you and motivates you to keep going.
And that’s something that Sundance has really done for my career. It’s given me the sense that I can collaborate with and rely on people who will champion my work. It gives me so much wind in my sails.
Nick: I’ll wrap up on this, and I’m not sure if it stuck out even more so as we’re talking around the re-release of Revenge of the Sith, but Angela being compared to Queen Amidala got a good laugh out of me! Was that improvised on the day? Because it’s a great line!
Andrew Ahn: Believe it or not, that was scripted even before Kelly Marie Tran was cast! So, it was pretty wild! And then there’s mention of The Wizard of Oz in a scene with Bowen Yang, and that was in the script before Bowen Yang was even cast! So, I think it feels fated that this was our cast. But that’s the total truth!
Thank you to Andrew for his time, and to Maslow Entertainment for organising the interview! The Wedding Banquet is in Australian cinemas May 8.
