The Wedding Banquet <\/em>follows a bizarre, sitcom-esque plot, in which Wai-tung, his partner Simon, and his tenant-turned-wife Wei-Wei commit to convincing Wai-tung\u2019s traditionally minded parents that his relationship to her is legitimate. The film succeeds in efficiently crafting these people\u2019s earnest connections–sketching a landscape that feels uncomfortably close. Indeed, every interaction in the first half of the film is bathed in the mid-summer sun that traps New Yorkers, settling over the stifling city blocks. In these opening scenes we see Wei-Wei\u2019s wet hair hang limply over her shoulders, waiting to get her air conditioning fixed. We see Wai-Tung\u2019s shirt sit ill-fittingly on his uncomfortably damp body as he lifts furniture. Embodying the protagonists so immediately and grossly works to embed the audience in these overlapping connections, tangled and slippery. It is almost the opposite of Lee\u2019s strategy in The Ice Storm, <\/em>in which he initially keeps characters balanced across the frozen landscape like chess pieces navigating an allotted distance. Instead of eventually suspending them above their lives, the characters in The Ice Storm <\/em>are forced to crash into reality and acknowledge their interconnectedness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As with many directors, Lee\u2019s earliest offerings are both imperfect in shape and purified expressions of his intention as a filmmaker. His movies would develop to articulate ideas about longing through perfectly executed blocking and staging. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon <\/em>would revitalise the action genre with its hypnotic flow, capturing the moment where two love stories overlap–as brief as catching a leap mid-air. Brokeback Mountain <\/em>cemented itself as one of the great tragic romances with its earth-bending, all-encompassing story held in countless, beautifully composed moments, (Alma\u2019s unshakeable horror as she watches Ennis and Jack kiss; Lureen\u2019s grip on the phone, swallowed by waves of unspoken emotion talking about Jack\u2019s death; Ennis burying his face in Jack\u2019s denim shirt.) The Wedding Banquet <\/em>may be less indelible or cutting-edge, but this rougher composition also serves the story in its inexact theatricality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Shilling Love Part II\u2019\u2014a poem built around writer Shailja Patel\u2019s experience waiting for her parents as they are questioned by airport immigration\u2014is reminiscent of this line in The Wedding Banquet<\/em>. She writes of the pain in living within borders that portion off our identity: \u201cThe stench rises off us \/ unbearable \/ of what was never said\u201d. The staccato rhythm of both lines sees Wai-tun and Patel\u2019s pain wrapped in the ideas around it. Their desires are simmering beneath everyday life, only made solid when faced with their familial history, parents. Even then it is barely spoken aloud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the day of Wai-tun and Wei-Wei\u2019s wedding banquet, Mr. Gao addresses the wedding party by bestowing his blessing on the couple: \u201cYou two grew up differently, but fate has united you together, here, so far from home.\u201d Despite the misdirected intention, there is something wonderfully true embedded within this sentiment (even for the perennially clueless Simon, separated by a language barrier and smiling on supportively.) Lee\u2019s films span genre and style, but they are rooted in this image of people trying to connect, and despite the myriad of boundaries which splinter them off, briefly succeeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Wedding Banquet” is<\/em> streaming on Kanopy<\/a>, Hoopla<\/a>, Tubi<\/a>, and Pluto TV<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/wedding-banquet2-1024x554.jpg\")
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Simon and Wai-tun\u2019s love is simple and endearing, exquisitely reflected in a conversation where the two playfully chat over the phone despite being sat side by side. This moment, despite its cheesiness, is designed to buoy the audience, sustaining it across the physical separation which follows, exposing the sadness which reverberates through Wai-tun\u2019s and Wei-Wei\u2019s performative relationship. Lee plays with the space between Wai-tun and the important people in his life, wielding physical distance to both highlight a break between this couple and hold the swell of love necessary to deciphering a language far from your own. Open doors are used to physically obstruct people\u2019s paths to one another, framing someone within sight and out of reach, potent in the tension between near and far. Such a sentiment is expressed in Wai-tun\u2019s conversation with his mother in the hospital hallway. \u201cThere has been much pain and joy that I\u2019ve wanted to share with you. But I couldn\u2019t.\u201d He sits hunched over, weighed down by this specific regret, suspended in the space between too close and not close enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n