Kelly Marie Tran Cordially Invites You to a Celebration of Queer Joy

Do you hear that?! It's the sound of wedding bells ringing. Yes, wedding season is officially upon us, and it's not just the embossed invitations arriving in our mailboxes, the gorgeous gowns that made their debut at New York Bridal Fashion Week last week, or even the recent influx of wedding guest attire roundups. We're feeling the love on-screen, too, as we are cordially invited to partake in Andrew Ahn's joyful queer comedy The Wedding Banquet. A contemporary remake of Ang Lee's critically popular 1993 film, it's the romantic event of the season.

Ahn's version, which first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this January, centers on two gay couples, Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) and Min (Han Gi-chan) and Chris (Bowen Yang), who live on the same property. We meet both couples at an impasse in their relationships. Angela and Lee are trying to have a baby but are struggling through unsuccessful IVF treatments, while Min is being called back to South Korea by his grandmother to run the family business. In order for Min to stay in America with Chris and pursue his dream of being an artist, the friends hatch an elaborate plan: Min would marry Angela to satisfy his conservative family, and in exchange, Min would offer Angela and Lee financial support for additional IVF trials. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, it turns out.

For star Tran (Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi and Raya and the Last Dragon), making The Wedding Banquet was as much about creating a home and a chosen family off-screen as it was about portraying authentic queer experiences on-screen. The result is a perfect marriage of humor and heart that is a must-see.

The Wedding Banquet is a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film, which, at the time, saw a lot of critical and commercial success. What was your relationship with the original film going into this project?

I had seen it, but it was a long time ago when I was younger, and I didn't remember it. But obviously, I knew Ang Lee's work and was obsessed. I did a rewatch of it actually right before Sundance, and I'm really glad I did that because Andrew and James have put these really cool little references into our film—like the moment when Min and Angela are at the courthouse about to get married and Min's like, "Do we need to switch spots?" And the guy is like, "I don't care." In the original , he asks the couple to switch spots. There are these cute little references that I love, and the very last scene in the original film is so iconic, where he raises his hands at the airport. That was what Andrew was referencing in the scene with Angela at the end when she raises her hands yawning. There little things like that that I think are so thoughtful, and that says a lot about Andrew and James and how thoughtful they are and how much they wanted to honor the original, even though we were definitely taking it in a different direction and reimagining the whole thing.

We love a good Easter egg. What conversations did you have with Ahn about his vision for this remake and bringing the story into current times?

I don't know if we really had that many conversations specifically about that because it was all already there in the stript. I also think that, for the most part, so much of the experience, for me and also for the crew and a lot of people working on the set, was that we're queer people living in today's world. It was almost like we didn't have to have conversations about it.