“Queer Theory takes the joy of being gay!” blurred Bowen yangCharacter chris in one of several laughing loud but emotional moments in “The wedding banquet“Korean American filmmakers Andrew Ahnfourth function in just nine years. It is a “reimagination” rather than a new recording of Ang Lee’s loved 1993 Asian American Rom-Com Classic of the same name.
Chris, who has graduated from his doctorate, passes his days as a Birder. When his lovely, handsome Korean MFA art student boyfriend my (he gi-chan)-in great need for a green card to avoid shaking back to Korea and taking fabric by a chabol handled by his astonishing grandmother Played by Yuh-Jung Youn – Suggest, Chris, even though it is quite in love with mine, is petrified to commit. How can he, if he cannot connect himself to even a doctorate? As his cousin (Bobo Le) sharply observes, Chris is only interested in maintaining his “exquisite ambivalent relationship to the best that has happened (him).”
Ahn spoke to IndieWire over Zoom and said that “developing a feeling” from everyday relationships is what leads him. It helps that there is an excess of emotions and drama to mine from the source material. “What is so beautiful with Ang Lee’s’The wedding banquet“Is the incredible mixture of screwball comedy and cordial trauma. I knew I needed to do it in my own way. I was excited to accentuate some chaos and mobility from my characters. They try so hard, but they don’t do well for so much of film. ”
The other main characters who do not do well represent a fun innovation in this reworking of the original, which was a cash office a third of a century ago. Here, Chris and mine lives in the converted garage, which lies with Chris’s best friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone), a lesbian couple captured in a variety of IVF treatments, whose latest has failed. My hatch a plan with Lee in a key plot movement borrowed from the original: He and Angela will have a green short marriage in exchange for the money that pays for their latest IVF treatment. Chris and Angela are initially flabby, but one of the most fun reactions is from Angela’s Chinese mother to late to life, Played by veteran Joan Chen (“Dìdi”): “My daughter, marry a man!”
When he spoke to the lively comedy, and specifically to the queer theory-theorin-shady gay line, AHN said: “There is a philosophy that I try to formulate in the movie. It (the line) rhymes with one later tells Angela:” You are very smart, but sometimes you have to be stupid. “Sometimes it can think of someone from following their heart and taking action.
“And there is something at the cinema that I have grown. Cassavetes and other filmmakers who are not afraid to show their characters as disasters.”
It is a surprising self-evaluation from a filmmaker whose films-not to say anything about his television director on series including “Bridgerton”-separate not only in their exploration of tones and games with genre, but also in the directness of their emotionalness. Ahn rose to fame after winning the Spirit Awards John Cassavetes Prize for his debut function, “Spa Night”, a sexually sincere Coming-of-age drama of huge stealth. However, Ahn’s critically acclaimed other functions “driveway” is a straight indie drama with Hong Chau and the late Brian thishy. His 2022-hit “Fire Island”, a loose adaptation of Jane Austen’s “pride and prejudice”, is Rambunctious, open-hearted and unapologetically gay.
Perhaps a more accurate review of Ahn’s production is that his characters, consciously or unconsciously, need their feelings to arrive. This is despite the Ahn’s film style that defies simple categorization. “Spa Night” and “Fire Island” could not be more different in how gay they are, just like “The Wedding Banquet” is a romantic comedy that lands with a different degree of seriousness and harm than “Fire Island”, and is certainly much more than comedy of errors as the film’s insistent marketing material would think you think. As Ahn himself said: “Tone is probably the hardest nail.”
Navigate on multi -like characterization and balance tone go hand in hand in “The Wedding Banquet”, which Ahn co -wrote with previous focus features CEO James Schamus (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Brokeback Mountain”), which had co -written the original with Lee and Neil Peng. In fact, inspiring them in the structural arithmetic for several arches was “Eat drink man woman”, reveals Ahn, another early 1990s Ang Lee film with comparatively complicated ensemble dynamics. The feeling of the community as the green card for the marriage sentence for the characters is “genuine to modern queer life. Friendship or polyamory, we are such a web,” he said. “Our friendship with one person can influence how we are a lover for another.” He added, “this iteration of the” wedding banquet “grew because of a first thought experiment where I wondered:” What if the bride in Ang Lee’s movie (banquet) was also queer and had a queer partner? “
Schamus and Ahn and Ahn started working on the script as early as 2019 and started an organic, test-and-error-driven writing process. They never worked on the same final draft file at the same time, exchanged passports and used index cards, physical prints and table readings as writing tools. Ahn described Schamus as skilled in the story structure, because he has been a successful studio head, and when Ahn went to make “Fire Island”, Schamus continued to experiment with the script.
In fact, shamus is responsible for the character work that informs a central turning point in the film, when my grandmother makes a sudden visit from Korea in Seattle to meet my new hubby and continue to throw an elaborate traditional Paebaek wedding ceremony. Ahn said: “We had written an earlier draft where my grandmother does not realize what is happening (regarding the lavender-marriage or min’s sexuality) until much later. James said it may have felt a little old-fashioned. He was like:” This woman is smart. She knows. “And it was so exciting for me, I said, ‘Yes, let’s do it!’ ”
In a talented ensemble of actors, Youn’s performance stands out in a supportive role for his pervasive restraint. Ahn crafts the scenes around him with great care and leads our gaze towards what she sees, when she understands Foursome’s insecure Jenga of conflicts with rapid clarity. Here is AHN’s director’s philosophy for “filtering the noise from real life, to focus attention on the under -appointed” kicks in gear.
When he discussed the blockage of the confrontation scene with his cinemator Ki Jin Kim-so-so DP at “Spa Nights” and “Driveways” decided Ahn to let “Min’s grandmother hold the court. So she is the one on the couch, and they are on the stool, which sits lower. Much of the film is Handheel
In fact, the scene is based on the film in beautiful, unexpected ways, concretising Ahn’s attitude to film as a medium where the goal is to “find the breath in the story you tell” and to “embrace spikiness” of humanity. Ahn, who is also quite productive as a TV director, has monitored a section of “Bridgerton”, “Ghentefied” and most recently “Deli Boys”, says director “feels like I am doing the director’s traits. I really inhabit another person to adapt to the instincts in the show.”
In a similar type of self -control, he and shamus must be careful not to be removed with pricing everyone in the relationship and supporting undercurrents in the “wedding banquet”. On the question of whether the film could be expanded to a TV show, he said: “There is a construction (in the film) we had to take seriously, and then also an economy that is brutal and ruthless but also unfortunately a necessity for a modern attention area.”
On the question of imports of Han Gi-chan and about Korean audiences, and Ahn himself, would think of the “Wedding Banquet” as a diaspora film, Ahn said, “what I may have benefited from making this film is that there is much interest in Korean culture and not necessarily Korean American culture.” He laughed, he added, “we leaned into this type of K-drama style aesthetics. Just the fact that mine comes from a chabol family, we leaned into it and knew it might be exciting for an audience. And I still got that excitement between Korean identity and queer identity.
Addressing the Film’s International Release Plans, Ahn Said, “We do have plans to screen in Korea, which is very exciting, and of course, youn yuh-jung is a big part of that. She’s The Meryl Streep of Korea and Actually Thate, so inches an incredible gay. of Korea. But YES, in Think i’m Interested in all generations of the Korean Diaspora and the Korean American Experience. In Another Film, in May Explore another generation, another perspective.
“The Wedding Bank” is now in theaters from Bleecker Street.
