‘The Wedding Banquet’ Turns the Page on Queer Relationships
- Ella Wu
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
"The Wedding Banquet" (2025) is now in theaters.
In 1993, Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet” broke ground as one of the earliest films to bring a queer Asian love story to a global audience. It was a story of compromise, of navigating the delicate balance between cultural tradition and personal truth. For many, it was a revelation, a rare glimpse of queer life framed not by tragedy but by humor and heart. Thirty years later, the world has shifted in profound ways, and with it, the story of “The Wedding Banquet” has found a new chapter, reimagined for 2025.
At the heart of the original film was a singular question: How can one stay true to themselves while upholding the expectations of family? In 1993, the stakes were clear. Marriage was portrayed as the finish line, a hard-won victory for those who could claim it. For Wai-Tung and Simon, balancing a sham marriage and a closeted existence was as much about survival as it was about love.
The 2025 reboot, helmed by an ensemble cast including Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, and Han Gi-Chan, takes that foundation and builds something bolder. It shifts the focus from marriage as the ultimate goal to the broader, messier questions: What else is part of an evolving relationship? Marriage is great, but what about parenthood? Choosing a family? How do we navigate the responsibilities and uncertainties of queer love in a landscape that is both more accepting and more precarious?
Bowen Yang reflects, “I feel like we're still collectively figuring out how to move into those spaces of acceptance that feel uncomplicated and don't have an asterisk to them. It just feels very relatable. And there's the power in that.” The reboot captures that relatability by refusing to shy away from the complexities of queer life today, where the victories of the past coexist with the challenges of the present.
Family, of course, remains central to “The Wedding Banquet,” but the film reexamines the theme through the lens of chosen family. In this updated vision, family is not just a biological bond but a conscious act of connection and support. “Between Angela and Min, they choose their biological family, to bring them into the fold after years of being alienated by them,” says Bowen Yang.
“It’s kind of a double meaning. There’s the family you choose, and then there’s the act of choosing your family,” adds Lily Gladstone. “I have my own perspective that is shared widely through Indian country. We're not a homogenized society, but there are some things that are kind of common. And one of those is this concept of chosen family. We keep really tight record [of our family lineage] orally and [for] the last couple hundred years for government purposes, on paper. Adoption is as good as blood. Like when you're coming of age, and you're starting to date around, your family lets you know who you're related to and who you're not, so you don't cross those lines.”
Bowen Yang and Han Gi-Chan, who play one half of the central couples, bring a contemporary depth to their roles (Chris and Min, respectively). Their characters delve into the complexities of queer relationships today: the shadow of generational trauma, the weight of societal expectations, and the joy of building something entirely new. Their story isn’t just about coming out; it’s about staying out, about the daily acts of courage required to live authentically in a world that still resists full acceptance.
“Min feels like he can't come out to his family because it would cut him off from something that he feels rooted to,” says Bowen Yang of his co-star’s character. “[And] Angela had a pretty tumultuous coming out that ended up boomeranging back into overcorrected acceptance. She still feels alienated even though it feels like it's this thing that's being embraced about her now. The movie does a really amazing job of mending those wounds as the story progresses.”
“I agree,” Kelly Marie Tran adds. “I also think Kendall’s coming out and the idea that Chris takes care of them in this process is also such a beautiful depiction of what a coming out can be if you have a family that doesn't accept you.”
Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of “The Wedding Banquet” is also its most coincidental: the timing of its release. While the film was crafted as a deeply personal story about queer love and family, its arrival feels a little bit like fate, or at least a blessing, shining as an inadvertent beacon in a sociopolitical climate battered by conflicting waves of progress and backlash.
“We didn't make a political film,” says Lily Gladstone. “We made a film that had really solid bedrock with socioeconomic, cultural comments without being explicitly about queerness, about culture, about gentrification. Those are all just the world that this family finds themselves in. And I think that makes a film that represents people really authentically where they're at. And the rest of the ship was just built so well that it can weather a lot of different seas. So I do feel like it does have this timeless element because it embraces and acknowledges the culture and the time that we find ourselves in, and each character's proximity. It makes space for widening the lens and the conversation about queerness globally and culturally.”
“I learned just now that it is not a safer time for LGBT communities to live peaceful lives,” Han Gi-Chan says. “We didn't plan this timing [for the movie] to come out. And not only for those communities, but every humanity on earth could see this movie and feel what family means, what love means to them. It's a story for all times. We live with a family, we live with love.”
“I feel like we did create this big warm hug of a film for people that we always intended to,” Gladstone adds. “We didn't know that we were making such good medicine for the times ahead for people who needed it.”
Bowen Yang echoes this sentiment, noting, “They say hyperspecificity ends up being universal. I feel like this kind of hyperspecificity ends up being relevant and timeless. And it's never not going to be important to touch on these things, just like how the original movie was relevant at the time [and] still is.”
About "The Wedding Banquet" (2025):
Run: 87 minutes
Director: Andrew Ahn
Screenplay: Andrew Ahn and James Schamus (Based on the screenplay by
Ang Lee & Neil Peng and James Schamus)
Producers: Anita Gou, p.g.a., Joe Pirro, p.g.a.
Featuring: Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-Chan, Bobo Le, Camille Atebe, Joan Chen, Youn Yuh-Jung
Directors of Photography: Youn Yuh-Jung
Production Companies: Bleecker Street, ShivHans Pictures, Kindred Spirit & Symbolic Exchange
Cover Photo: Courtesy of Bleecker Street and ShivHans Pictures
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