The Wedding Banquet

Director: Ang Lee

1993 / 106min / 35mm

Before scaling Brokeback Mountain, Taiwanese American director Lee made this indie breakout about Wai Tung (Winston Chao, in his film debut), a gay man happily living in Manhattan with his partner who stages a sham marriage between himself and a penniless immigrant artist from mainland China in his building (May Chin) in order to please his traditionally minded parents—only to be appalled when they insist on throwing the “newlyweds” a whopper of a wedding party. A tender, emotionally grounded, sharply observed comedy of clashing cultures that’s made all the more poignant by its function as a time capsule of ’90s NYC.

Part of Mid-Autumn Movies