The Wedding Banquet
(2025 | USA | 103 minutes | Andrew Ahn)

I found much about Andrew Ahn’s American update of Ang Lee’s classic to be incredibly confusing. This one is set in Seattle (filmed in Vancouver, enhanced with B-roll cutaways to Seattle institutions and vistas) and the central conflict remains related to a young protagonist needing a green card.

Here, though, it’s a Korean fine arts graduate student (Han Gi-chan, charming but far out of his depth) whose work involves gorgeous textiles who, for reasons unspecified, absolutely does not want to assume what should be a coveted role the Creative Director for his family’s collection of fashion brands (a homophobic grandfather is involved). Instead, he attempts to stay in the US by proposing to his long-term boyfriend (Bow Yang, funny as ever) who refuses because … reasons. With this route off the table, he instead proposes to his boyfriend’s best friend (Kelly Marie Tran), a lesbian also in a long term relationship with a prominent Queer activist in exchange for money for a third IVF attempt.

As the girlfriend trying to become pregnant, Lily Gladstone displays her immense talent to convey deeply complex emotions with few words, but there’s a degree to which this only spotlights the very different styles of acting on display, leaving the farcical premise painfully disjointed between light humor and rich emotion. Joan Chen is a fun presence as an all-in PFLAG Tiger Mom, but only the “legendary” Youn Yuh-jung surpasses Gladstone’s performance. Whenever she’s on screen, you can feel her supreme talents vaguely bending the scattershot material to her will. In her tremendous scenes, the whole mess begins to vaguely make sense, at least emotionally.

The Wedding Banquet played as an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It has additional screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City throughout the festival.