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Ang Lee (director), The Wedding Banquet, 1993. 108 min.

Ang Lee’s 1993 film The Wedding Banquet opens with a sequence in which Wai-Tung (Winston Chao), dripping with perspiration, performs weightlifting exercises with perfect form as a recording from his parents plays overhead, informing him that they have hired yet another dating service to expedite the process of finding a nice girl for him to settle down with. The weight of filial obligation is conveyed through his strained exertion, unwilling as he is to reveal his queerness to his parents. He and his long-term partner Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) attempt to thwart Wai-Tung’s parents’ agenda by setting impossibly high standards, demanding only a woman with a PhD, trained in classical opera, and no shorter than five foot nine, yet, miraculously, the dating service delivers.

Enter Wei-Wei (May Chin), a struggling modernist painter from mainland China, living in one of Wai-Tung’s dilapidated Williamsburg properties in exchange for an artwork every once in a while, lamenting her inability to find a “stupid American” to marry in order to remain in the States. Simon suggests that Wai-Tung marry her, both to fend off his parents and to allow Wei-Wei to stay in the country; much to Wai-Tung’s chagrin, he agrees. They plan to take care of the matter swiftly via a city hall marriage, but complications arise when Wai-Tung’s parents announce that they will travel to America to witness the union. Wei-Wei studies the intricacies of Wai-Tung’s daily life in preparation for the immigration interview, while Wai-Tung and Simon frantically conceal the various paraphernalia strewn about the apartment that reveal them as a couple. By the time Mr and Mrs Gao land at John F. Kennedy Airport, Wei-Wei is dressed in red from head to toe, vigorously dragging their luggage; Wai-Tung is fabricating the story of their relationship from start to finish; and Simon is introduced as their landlord. Their façade of a green-card-cum-lavender marriage begins.

The Wedding Banquet is the second instalment in what is known as Lee’s “Father Knows Best” trilogy, alongside Pushing Hands (1991) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), each featuring a father figure who embodies the conservative, Confucian tradition in the face of his children’s desires and pursuits within an increasingly Westernised milieu. The ruse is indeed perpetuated for the sake of both parents, yet the father’s presence is notably fragile; he arrives in New York having only recently recovered from a stroke. When he attempts to wash the dishes after dinner, the plates slip from his grip and shatter on the floor. One morning, as Wai-Tung notices his father napping, he creeps up and places his index finger beneath his father’s nostrils to check for an exhale. The Confucian paternal figure’s authority is subverted; he lacks physical vitality and is unknowingly being appeased through an elaborate sham.

Dismayed by the informality of the couple’s union, Mr Gao’s former orderly offers to host the film’s titular occasion at his banquet hall. Lavish celebrations soon commence, with a throng of unnamed Chinese guests flooding the hall and, by the end of the evening, the couple’s bedroom. Wei-Wei and Wai-Tung are coerced into undressing beneath the sheets, the crowd refusing to leave until they comply. Fuelled by drunken stupor, they copulate, and Wei-Wei becomes pregnant.

Each character slips in and out of their role in the ruse—these sequences being some of the most humorous in the film. Simon prepares traditional Chinese fare and quickly snatches Wei-Wei’s open can of beer, switching places with her so that she can take credit for his cooking; when she is later tasked with preparing a simple breakfast alone, the toast is burnt to a charcoal black. One of the white wedding guests remarks that he thought “the Chinese were supposed to be meek, quiet, maths wizzes,” to which Ang Lee himself responds in a cameo: “You’re witnessing the results of 5,000 years of sexual repression.” The performance flits between situational comedy and rueful resignation, relishing in the characters’ troubles yet remaining acutely aware of the implicit homophobia that undergirds them.

The ploy begins to unravel when Wei-Wei’s pregnancy and her intention to obtain an abortion are revealed during a heated argument at breakfast, and Mr Gao suffers another mild stroke. The depth of social conservatism harboured by Wai-Tung’s parents comes to light when his mother laments what went “wrong” with her seemingly heterosexual son, imploring him not to tell his father as it would “kill him.” In the film’s central plot twist, Mr Gao suddenly speaks to Simon in English, gifting him a birthday red envelope and revealing that he has known about their relationship all along, playing the part of the clueless elder for the sake of the family. He switches back to Mandarin, sagely murmuring, “If I didn’t let them lie to me, I’d never have got a grandchild.”

The entire premise of the film dissolves into youthful hubris; the Confucian paternal figure’s authority is reinstated, and the painstaking lengths to which Wai-Tung, Simon, and Wei-Wei have gone are reduced to mere antics. Lee’s earlier cameo comment weighs heavily upon the film’s ethos despite its light-hearted delivery: the established Confucian conception of the family remains socially conservative. Wai-Tung would sooner marry a woman than willingly disclose his sexual orientation to his family. Yet the rift between generations is here resolved in optimistic serendipity, as if wishfully relinquishing the upper hand back to the paternal figure. Rather than culminating in an explosive argument or estrangement, Mr Gao ultimately accepts his son’s queerness, albeit in secret from the rest of the family. Mrs Gao too remains unaware of her husband’s knowledge, the film endowing the father with the ultimate wisdom and capacity for acceptance in the classic Confucian ethos. Forgiveness is doled out generously among the characters, as if insisting that no cultural difference could impede genuine affection.

The Wedding Banquet assuages the anxieties within the Confucian family as newer generations disperse into the West. Diaspora media continues to explore the intricacies of generational rifts and their associated stereotypes, a feat Lee accomplished well before it became fashionable in Hollywood. With wit and humour, Lee imagines the Confucian patriarchal figure as malleable to cultural difference, even if that vision teeters on the purely wishful.

How to cite: Gu, Jade. “Filial Piety and Farce: Negotiating Family and Queerness in Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 15 Oct. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/10/15/wedding.

Jade Gu is an English graduate from Purdue and a tech worker currently living in Brooklyn. She is interested in writing about literature, film, and various other forms of culture.

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