BFI Flare 2025 – The Wedding Banquet ★★★★★

Released: TBC (UK)/BFI Flare 2025

Director: Andrew Ahn

Starring: Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-Chan, Lily Gladstone

Premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and now gracing BFI Flare. The Wedding Banquet is a remake of Ang Lee’s Academy Award-nominated romantic comedy directed by Fire Island director Andrew Ahn and co-written by James Schamus, who also worked on Lee’s original film. The film stars an ensemble cast that features Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Fire Island star Bowen Yang and Korean actor Han Gi-Chan in his feature film debut as a queer quad of lovers who find themselves entangled in a marriage of convenience.

Set in Seattle, Lee and Angela (Gladstone, Tran) are a lesbian couple struggling to have a baby through IVF. Their best friends, Asian couple Chris and Min (Yang, Han), have been in a relationship for five years but Chris is reluctant to commit long-term, refusing Min’s numerous proposals. But when Min discovers that his student visa is almost up and faces being forced to return to Korea, he proposes marriage —to Angela to secure a green card in exchange for IVF funds.

While Lee’s 1993 rom-com focuses on one gay couple, Ahn mixes things up by not only highlighting two gay couples but also featuring people of colour to highlight the cultural diversity among his characters, most of whom are of Asian ethnicity. As audiences may have seen through Evelyn and Joy’s relationship in Everything Everywhere All at Once, LGBTQ relationships are tolerated by older generations in Asian cultures. In addition, marriage and children can be considered preferred life goals – but ideally with heterosexual partners, as stated by Min’s traditional but streetwise grandmother Ja-Young (Minari star Youn Yuh-Jung), who believes in family and longevity. But in The Wedding Banquet, the main characters are unashamedly gay with a house full of art, films and books celebrating queer artists. Furthermore, Angela’s mother May (Dìdi’s Joan Chen) openly voices her support for the gay and lesbian community, even though her overcompensation evokes resentment from her neglected daughter. There is an overwhelming sense of pride in identity yet it is not overly flamboyant, showing that relationships come in different forms and are all equally romantic.

Schamus and Korean-American director Ahn incorporate a poignant, relatable spin on queer romantic comedies. The drama amid the co-dependent couples comes from their reluctance to embrace conventional roles such as wedded partners and parents, choosing to live in the “now” rather than their hypothetical future. Lee contemplates travelling the world yet Angela wants to become a mother. Meanwhile, the high-achieving, marriage-averse Chris is struggling to finish his dissertation and Min, the heir to a multinational Korean firm, is worried that his sexuality means being cut out of the family fortune. 

With these characters uncertain about their futures, it occasionally feels like they have to jump continuous hurdles towards a happy ending such as the unwanted involvement of family members, as well as general emotional turmoil from the couples’ drunken antics. But the screenplay beautifully conveys a message of acceptance and understanding through Ahn’s modern dynamic, only with a lot more cheek. This results in a sharp, hilarious script with a refreshing directness that makes the characters’ dynamic all the more endearing and natural.

With such a stacked Hollywood cast, there is no shortage of star power in this romantic comedy. Tran and Gladstone carry most of the film’s emotional depth through their issues about motherhood while Yang and Han deliver some of the best lines through snark and brutal honesty. Yet some of the best scenes in The Wedding Banquet involve Joan Chen and Youn Yuh-jung, proving they are the film’s OGs through their comedic wit and surprising wisdom amid being the archetypally intrusive Asian matriarch.

Ahn’s direction seamlessly allows the cast to shine amid an entertaining story and a celebration of Asian and queer cultures. From drag lion dancers to an awkwardly elaborate Korean wedding ceremony, the director boldly puts his heritage in the limelight and allows queer Asian couples to be seen on screen amid a vibrant scene. In addition, Ki Jin Kim’s considerate cinematography and Charlotte Royer’s production design allow the quieter moments to bring a sense of joy such as Lee tending her plants and Min reusing fabrics to make artistic pieces for Chris’ beautiful artwork of birds.

Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet enables an Asian LGBTQ story with a cast of colour to shine in a Hollywood production, presenting an act of defiance when political changes have made moves to disregard diversity. Blending laughs and tenderness, it is a heartwarming romantic comedy that shows relationships in all kinds of forms – and the abundance of love they have to offer.