The Wedding Banquet

     Ang Lee's 1993 film The Wedding Banquet can be considered a modern day love story, where conflict is not derived from love itself, but rather from cultural and generational beliefs  and differences. The protagonist, Wei-Tung, is a successful career-man and landlord, who happens to be a gay Taiwanese American who has yet to reveal his sexual orientation to his traditional Taiwanese parents. Out of fear of causing disappointment and shock to his recently removed and prestigious military father, as he is recovering from recent a heart-attack, Wei-Tung accepts a match-dating service arrangement, to uphold the happiness of both his parents. After the revealing of his homo-sexuality to his dating service date, Wei-Tung, as an excuse for the failure of the dating-service arrangment, lies to his parents by telling them he is engaged to a Taiwanese woman. In response to Wei-Tung's claim of marriage, his parents invite themselves for a visit, as Wei-Tung's father's last request in life is to hold his grandchild in his arms. Out of panic, We-Tung's male partner, Chris, suggests the marriage to a tenant of We-Tung's, Wei-Wei, as she needs the arrangement of marriage in order to acquire a green card. As both, Wei-Wei and Wei-Tung, agree upon the proposition, drama and chaos ensues as the couple tries to portray personas they realistically are not; Wei-Wei, a cooking and cleaning house-wife, and Wei-Tung, a hetero-sexual male. After a passionless and undignified town hall wedding, Wei-Tung's crying mother takes the couple and hersbund, in addition to Chris as a “ friend and landlord”, out to eat at a Tawiwanese resturaunt, an ex-soldier of Wei-Tung's father, who happens to be the owner, demands to host the family a respectable wedding banquet. Following the alcohol-supplied wedding banquet, Wei-Tung and Wei-Wei make love after Wei-Wei's aggressive assertiveness  causing a an argument between Wei-Tung and Chris; through which, We-Tung's father learns the whole truth. As a Hollywood-type ending would entail, Wei-Wei decides not to have an abortion and both, Chris and We-Tung, agree to help raise the baby under the blessing of Wei-Tung's father, while the love shared between Chris and We-Tung remained strong, and prevailed in the end.

     The themes of cross-cultural and cross-generational differences echoed throughout the film: Old -school generation, a generation of tradition and respect, and new-school generation, a generation of new beliefs and achievement through self-happiness; not upholding of family tradition. The lesson of the film, while not always the actual result in life, is that the older generation will be accept something they do not understand, or agree with, as long as it makes their children happy.

     Although I found the film to have a typical Hollywood type ending, it was still an entertaining film. For a romantic comedy, I found it enjoyable due to the theme of cross-cultural and cross-generational differences and misunderstanding, as it was a well-thought up plot that creatively addressed a cross-cultural/generational theme.