The Wedding Banquet

The Wedding Banquet (1993)

囍宴

A little deception at the reception.

A Taiwanese-American man is happily settled in New York with his American boyfriend. He plans a marriage of convenience to a Chinese woman in order to keep his parents off his back and to get the woman a green card. Chaos follows when his parents arrive in New York for the wedding.

Date of release
1993-03-01
TMDB
7.2 / 10 (306)
Runtime
1h 48m
Genres
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Director
Ang Lee

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: New York City
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 2. Including: Golden Bear; Golden Horse Award for Best Feature Film

The Wedding Banquet is a 1993 romantic comedy film directed, produced and co-written by Ang Lee. The story concerns a gay Taiwanese immigrant man who marries a mainland Chinese woman to placate his parents 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. It was a co-production of Lee's Good Machine production company, and the Taiwanese Central Motion Picture Corporation.

Production

Neil Peng approached director Ang Lee with the idea behind The Wedding Banquet in 1986 by revealing to Lee that one of their mutual friends had moved to the United States and was in a same-sex relationship without the knowledge of the man's parents. Lee and Peng began writing the screenplay two years later and were soon joined by James Schamus.

The Wedding Banquet was the debut film of Winston Chao, whom Ang Lee met on an airline where he was working as a flight attendant. Chao, who had no formal acting training, was reticent to take the part, until Lee agreed to coach him with an acting instructor of his choosing. Chao spent three-to-four hours each day before and during filming in in-depth rehearsals.

Filming took place entirely on-location in New York City. To keep the budget low, the production used free or public locations, including JFK International Airport, the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting, Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, and cast and crew members' homes. The titular banquet scene was shot in the ballroom of a Sheraton Hotel near LaGuardia Airport.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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