The Wedding Banquet: The queer Asian rom-com that is reimagining what family looks like
Note: This post may contain spoilers
The Wedding Banquet (2025) is a romantic comedy starring Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-Chan, and Bowen Yang as two gay couples who are best friends.
Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) want to start a family, but have run out of money for IVF treatments. Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min’s (Han Gi-Chan) relationship is in danger as Min’s U.S. visa runs out and he will not marry Chris for fear of coming out and getting cut off by his family.
To solve their problems, Min proposes to marry Angela in exchange for paying for Lee’s IVF treatments. When Min’s grandmother insists on surprising them with a lavish wedding banquet, drama and comedy ensues.
Sources: Cosmopolitan, Them
The film is an adaptation of Ang Lee’s 1993 romantic comedy film of the same name, which starred Winston Chao and May Chin as a gay landlord and female tenant who get married to get the tenant a green card while appeasing the landlord’s parents.
Life has shifted for queer people since the original film was made in 1993. Set in a post-marriage equality United States, The Wedding Banquet (2025) expands the definition of family to include chosen family, giving queer people the freedom to reinvent what family means to them:
In Ahn’s modern interpretation, The Wedding Banquet explores many current-day issues faced by queer communities of color, including:
→ immigration
→ homophobia
→ starting a family through IVF
→ intercultural relationships and marriages
→ chosen family
“I thought about: What are the questions that I’m wrestling with as a queer person today? Conversations about marriage and about having kids — and I wrote a lot of that into these two couples.”
Source: Them
The Wedding Banquet also shifts the narrative on homophobia in Asian families through the character of Angela’s mother, May (Joan Chen), who is a comedically over-supportive ally to her lesbian daughter:
Actress Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Angela, faced an onslaught of racist and sexist cyberbullying following her casting as Rose Tico, which made her the first Asian American actress to star in a Star Wars movie. Now, Tran is making a comeback in The Wedding Banquet and is slated to portray SA survivors’ rights activist Amanda Nguyen in her upcoming biopic.
In an interview, Tran shared how working on a queer set inspired her to come out publicly:
Source: Variety, USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter
Queer Asian representation is important: it helps queer Asian people feel seen, normalizes their existence, and helps others better understand their experiences.
Chosen family is especially important for queer Asian people: research shows that AAPI LGBTQ+ youth who have social support from friends attempt suicide at lower rates than those without a support system. Parental acceptance and LGBTQ-affirming spaces are also shown to reduce suicide rates.
Source: The Trevor Project
