Cultural Provocateur : MOVIE REVIEW : Marriage of Convenience Yields a Full ‘Banquet’

Stress is a great generator of comedy, and even under the best of circumstances few things (trust me) are as stressful as having a public event attached to your marriage. And the couple getting joined in “The Wedding Banquet” are definitely not doing it under the best of circumstances.

True, both are Chinese living in New York City, but that is about all they have in common. Wai Tung (Winston Chao) is a citizen and a real estate entrepreneur, the only son of a wealthy Taiwanese family, while artist Wei Wei (May Chin) is a penniless illegal immigrant from the mainland who is barely surviving in a borderline apartment. And one more thing. Wai Tung is gay, passionately involved with Western lover Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein), and about as likely a candidate for heterosexual marriage as Quentin Crisp.

But he’s never told his parents.

When summarized this way, Wai Tung and Wei Wei’s dilemma sounds more derivative than diverting, a combination of “Green Card” and “La Cage aux Folles.” But don’t be fooled. “The Wedding Banquet” (at the Goldwyn Pavilion and Beverly Center Cineplex) is very much its own picture, with an individual sensibility and point of view. As poignant and pointed as it is funny (and it is very funny), it dresses up familiar forms with modern twists and ends up an assured and amusing comedy of manners that was the surprise winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear.

Though it takes place entirely in New York, most of “Wedding Banquet’s” dialogue is in Chinese with English subtitles, a circumstance that points up one of the film’s strengths. Directed by Ang Lee, himself a Taiwanese who moved to New York (and co-written by Lee, Neil Peng and James Schamus), “Banquet” parts the curtain hiding the city’s Chinese community, and uses the habits and customs of this self-contained enclave as key elements in its farcical plot.

While Wai Tung probably doesn’t think of himself as especially Chinese, his respect for his parents and deep desire to please them give him away. Happily living with physical therapist Simon in a Manhattan brownstone, he is troubled every time he receives a tape-recorded letter from his mother recounting how his father, a retired Taiwanese general, is staying alive only to see him married and the father of a son.

Wei Wei, one of Wai Tung’s tenants, has problems of her own, including serious poverty and a constant fear of the immigration service. Simon, who is both sympathetic to Wei Wei and bemused by the tenacity of Wai Tung’s parents, forever enrolling him in one elite and expensive dating service after another, suggests that the two of them enter into a classic marriage of convenience. More than getting his parents off his back, he points out, it would afford the driven and businesslike Wai Tung a great tax deduction.

No sooner is the decision made than a delicious string of unforeseen complications starts to unwind, starting with the determination of Wai Tung’s parents (Sihung Lung and Ah-Leh Gua) to come to New York for the wedding. How to disguise Wai Tung’s relationship with Simon, how to make Wei Wei seem like one of the family, and, most pressing of all, how to react when the elders start insisting that nothing but a major league wedding banquet would be fitting for such an occasion.

Nothing would be easier than to caricature any and all participants in this increasingly zany chain of misunderstandings but writer-director Lee’s advantage is that he refuses to let that happen. Everyone involved in this farce, eccentric and amusing though they may be, is given a full measure of dignity and humanity, a situation that not only makes the proceedings more believable but adds to the humor as well.

Nicely acted, especially by Lichtenstein (who made a memorable impression in “Streamers”) and the veteran Taiwanese actors who play Wai Tung’s parents, “Wedding Banquet” (Times-rated Mature) is one of those rare films that bring just the right touch to its proceedings, handling the comedy and the seriousness with equal deftness. By being straight about both the gay and the Chinese-American experience (the film is the biggest box-office hit in Taiwanese history), Ang Lee has made a picture with unmistakably universal appeal.

‘The Wedding Banquet’

Winston Chao: Wai Tung

May Chin: Wei Wei

Mitchell Lichtenstein: Simon

Sihung Lung: Mr. Gao

Ah-Leh Gua: Mrs. Gao

Released by the Samuel Goldwyn Co. Director Ang Lee. Producers Ted Hope, Ang Lee, James Schamus. Screenplay Ang Lee, Neil Peng, James Schamus. Cinematographer Jong Lin. Editor Tim Squyres. Music Mader. Production design Steve Rosenzweig. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (sexual situations).