Review:

A comedy-melodrama that takes old-fashioned screwball comedy elements and mixes them with '90s sensibilities and a homosexual twist, "The Wedding Banquet" is a low-budget, independent film that could be described as "La Cage aux Folles" meets "Green Card."

Wai Tung (Winston Chao) is an immigrant living in Manhattan with his gay lover Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), and he would be perfectly content if it weren't for his parents back home in Taiwan constantly trying to fix him up with prospective wives. They don't know their son is gay, and they want him to settle down and give them grandchildren.

Wai-Tung (Winston Chao) has a problem. Living in New York with a well-paying job, a nice home, and a stable relationship (with Simon, played by Mitchell Lichtenstein), everything appears to be going his way. But his parents, unaware of his homosexual proclivities, are expecting a marriage and grandchildren, and Wai hasn't been able to get up the courage to tell them that he's gay. Meanwhile, Wei Wei (May Chin), a tenant in a building owned by Wai, has to find a way to obtain a green card or be deported. A solution to both problems is proposed: a marriage of convenience. Once agreed to by both parties, the arrangements are made, and everything seems to be working out well until Wai's parents arrive from China to plan the wedding banquet.

A wholly delightful comedy of human nature, The Wedding Banquet taps into a rich stream of emotion via Ang Lee's light, perceptive touch. In Manhattan, Wai-tung (Winston Chao) is quite tangibly a success story. Through hard work, talent and application he's amassed a spread of property; it's fortunate that his tenants are not all like Wei-wei (May Chin) though. An illegal Chinese immigrant, she scrapes a living through waitressing and painting. Unfortunately Wai-tung doesn't meet his parent's expectations in one very important way; Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) is the love of his life. In short, Wai-tung is gay.

To the degree that one can fashion a life that is completely satisfying, Wai-Tung believes he has done so. A young Chinese man from Taiwan, gay, in his late 20s, he lives with his American companion Simon in a comfortable brownstone in New York, and manages some loft buildings he has purchased. All is well - except for the letters and phone calls from his parents, who wonder, with increasing urgency, when he is going to marry a nice Chinese girl and present them with a grandchild.

"The Wedding Banquet" is being presented as a zany comedy, complete with promotional fortune cookie giveaways in theater lobbies. But it's really a sweet, perceptive story about the cost of deception and the power of family rituals.

Written and directed by Ang Lee, a Taiwanese trained in the United States, and featuring well-known Taiwanese in four of the five lead roles, the film is almost entirely in Chinese. The subtitles are sometimes hard to read, but using the language (as opposed to dubbing) adds texture and enhances the cultural dislocation that is at the heart of the movie.

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