By Jordan Crucchiola

When Andrew Ahn was first offered the job to co-write and direct a contemporary remake of Ang Lee’s 1993 film, The Wedding Banquet, he was initially hesitant to accept. Lee’s film was so important to him that he didn’t know if he wanted to take on the responsibility of rewriting it for present-day audiences. It was the first queer movie he ever watched.

“When I was 8 years old, my family and I were at a video rental store, and my mom saw the VHS for The Wedding Banquet. She said, ‘That’s that movie with Asian people in it that white people are watching. We should see what it’s about,’” recalls Ahn. “So we rented it, not knowing it was a queer film, and as an 8-year-old gay nascent-brained child it just really resonated with me. In retrospect, I realized that was the first gay film I ever saw, and it’s so meaningful to me that the first gay film I ever saw was also a gay Asian American film and showed these characters with so much humanity.” After deciding to accept the project, Ahn says he was able to relieve the pressure of the original film’s legacy by making the story very personal to his own life. He also worked on the screenplay with the 1993 film’s co-writer, James Schamus. 

The last full-length feature film Ahn brought to the Sundance Film Festival was in 2016, called Spa Night. Introducing The Wedding Banquet at the January 27 premiere inside Eccles Theatre at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, senior director of programming Kim Yutani informs the crowd she had also been the one to introduce Spa Night nine years ago. “I think what Andrew has created here is truly a unique project,” says Yutani. “This film is funny. It’s warm, but most of all it’s a love letter to the unconventional ways queer relationships survive and thrive.”

Ahn’s new take on The Wedding Banquet centers on two gay couples who live on the same property: A pair of boyfriends, Min (Han Gi-chan) and Chris (Bowen Yang), and a pair of girlfriends, Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone). Lee and Angela are trying to have a baby, but the IVF treatments are so far unsuccessful, and very expensive. Min is an artist who is being called back to South Korea by his grandmother, so that he can run the uber-successful family business from which Min has lots of money he is not ashamed to mention. But Min wants to stay in America, be with Chris, and make art. An elaborate plan is hatched to try and help everyone, in which Min would marry Angela so that he wouldn’t have to tell his grandmother that he is gay — and he could then stay in the U.S. In exchange, Angela and Lee would get Min’s financial assistance in paying for additional IVF trials. As you might expect, nothing goes according to plan and everyone starts fighting. 

Actor Joan Chen plays Angela’s mother, May, and during the Q&A she tells the audience about how much of a sense of community she felt during shooting. “I loved our chosen family that we had on set, which is what this film was all about. I treasured the experience and having these great young people who were having so much fun on set.” It’s at this moment that Chen becomes the star of the talkback and drops a bomb on her costars. “Youn Yuh-jung [who plays Min’s grandmother] and I, we were a little jealous. They were having gummies.” The theater exploded into laughter as Yang rebutts Chen, barely keeping it together. “This is blindsiding us because that did not happen!” At which point Tran interjects, “They were Haribos!” Yang: “They were Haribo gummies! And because Joan heard us laugh she assumed they were edibles.”

At this point facts become muddied, as Chen says, “No! It was a big bowl of gummies that was sent up by the person who is caring for all the cast, and I said, ‘Oh, yeah. I’d love to have some gummies. And he said, ‘Oh, Joan. This is not for you.’ And he turned and walked the other direction and I heard all this giggling and laughing — ok. Whatever that is!”

With Gummygate still unresolved, the fact remains that the silliness and the conflict and the reconciliation (on camera and off, apparently) all amounts to the joy of Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet. It’s a movie that, stripped down to its elements, is about how queer people live with one another and love one another and forge found families in a world that still often rejects the truth of their hearts. “I want to be a husband. I want to be a dad. And this movie is maybe weird wish-fulfillment — and this is terribly awkward because my boyfriend is here,” Ahn tells the theater, sending everyone into a round of laughter and applause. “With having such a queer family, I think we could be so vulnerable with each other, and I think that vulnerability allowed that heart-forward empathy that I think is at the core of the beauty of the film.”

A wedding is a celebration, and The Wedding Banquet is also a celebration — of living and loving and fighting and making up again, and doing it all with the gift of being queer. As Ahn said during his introduction, “This film is about chosen family, about growing your family. It’s a film about home, and whether it’s from natural disasters or genocide or unjust legislation, homes can be brutally taken away and we can’t take it for granted. This film is a celebration of home and how we grow together. This incredible cast and crew made this home together, so let’s do what we do at home. We laugh, cry, love, and I invite you to our wedding. I invite you to our home. I hope you enjoy the film.”