The Wedding Banquet

The Wedding Banquet
Theatrical release poster
Chinese name
Chinese喜宴
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinXǐyàn
Wade–GilesHsi3 yen4
Directed byAng Lee
Written byAng Lee
Neil Peng
James Schamus
Produced byAng Lee
Ted Hope
James Schamus
Starring
CinematographyJong Lin
Edited byTim Squyres
Music byThierry Schollhammer
Chosei Funahara
Production
companies
Distributed byCentral Motion Picture Corporation (Taiwan)
The Samuel Goldwyn Company (U.S.)
Release dates
  • February 1993 (1993-02) (Berlin)
  • 5 March 1993 (1993-03-05) (Taiwan)
  • 4 August 1993 (1993-08-04) (U.S.)
Running time
106 minutes
CountriesTaiwan
United States[1]
LanguagesMandarin
English
Budget$1 million[2]
Box office$23.6 million[2]

The Wedding Banquet[3] is a 1993 romantic comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Ang Lee. The story concerns a bisexual Taiwanese immigrant man (played by Winston Chao, in his film debut) who marries a mainland Chinese woman (May Chin) to placate his parents (Gua Ah-leh and Lung Sihung) and get her a green card. His plan backfires when his parents arrive in the United States to plan his wedding banquet and he has to hide the truth of his gay partner (Mitchell Lichtenstein). It was a co-production of Lee's Good Machine production company, and the Taiwanese Central Motion Picture Corporation.

Lee's second feature film and his first to get a theatrical release in the United States, The Wedding Banquet premiered at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear. It was both a critical and commercial success and won five Golden Horse Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. It received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Foreign-Language Film, as well as six Independent Spirit Award nominations.

Together with Pushing Hands (1991) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), all showing the Confucian family at risk, and all starring the Taiwanese actor Lung Sihung, The Wedding Banquet forms what has been called Lee's "Father Knows Best" trilogy.[4]

In 2023, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

  1. ^ "The Wedding Banquet (1993)". AFI Catalog. American Film Institute.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference variety was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Chinese: 喜宴; pinyin: Xǐyàn; Wade–Giles: Hsi3 yen4
  4. ^ Dariotis, Wei Ming; Fung, Eileen (1 January 1997). "Breaking the Soy Sauce Jar: Diaspora and Displacement in the Films of Ang Lee". In Lu, Hsiao-peng; Lu, Sheldon H. (eds.). Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-8248-1845-6. Retrieved 27 October 2015.