Taiwan: The Wedding Banquet (1993)

THE WEDDING BANQUET

Nowadays, the world has opened its' mind much more to the idea of homosexuality. It has been a long road for gays and lesbians to make themselves heard and have their choices respected. The Western World, especially, has made great advances into accepting and including partners of the same sex into society without judgment or condemnation. Unfortunately this is not the case in some other countries and cultures around the world. Their strong religious beliefs and strict moral interpretation makes it extremely difficult for them to accept homosexuality as a normal lifestyle, forcing gays and lesbians to keep their preferences to themselves. Due to this issue, many of them feel the need to move away from their judgmental societies and decide to start a life in countries like the United States where they have the possibility of living as they want without being discriminated against.

This is precisely the case of Wai-Tung Gao (Winston Chao), the main character in Ang Lee’s film “The Wedding Banquet”.  Wai-Tung leaves his home country-Taiwan to start a life in America where his homosexual preference can be kept out of sight and knowledge of his parents. 

Wai-Tung lives a comfortable life in Manhattan where he shares a beautiful duplex with his life partner, Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein). He has a good job and rents apartments. The downside of his perfect life is his parents constant calls pressuring him to find a wife and have kids. To allay the suspicions of Wai-Tung's parents, Simon suggests to organize a wedding of convenience with Wei-Wei (May Chin), a Chinese artist who is illegally in the country. She is friends with both Simon and Wai-Tung and has recently lost her job. She fears she will be deported if she doesn’t find a way of getting an immigration green card to stay in the United States. Excited with the news, Wai-Tung's parents come to New York for the ceremony, insist on organizing the banquet, which will bring many humorous complications. 

The theme of the movie revolves around the power the social taboos can have among people and how they can bring them to act in desperate, even insane ways. Wai-Tung's difficulty of being honest about his preferences made him prisoner of a lie that was very difficult to carry through and almost destroyed his relationship with his real partner. Perhaps it was that he doesn’t want to hurt or disappoint his parents, but perhaps also, it was his fear of being rejected by his parents. Ang Lee does an amazing job of getting the moral of the movie through. He presents the film in a humorous way, but at the same times leaves space for profound analysis of different social issues. He leads us to experience, along with the characters, the vibrant anxiety of having to keep the lie, and at the same times gives us the opportunity to see how Wai- Tung's parents were both able to accept, in their own way, their son’s preference once they found out what it was. 

The Wedding Banquet can be considered without a doubt a masterpiece and was recognized with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and winning awards in other film festivals. It is a film which lets us experience the struggle that being different to society's norm can produce and, at the same time, leaves us a smile of hope in our hearts of knowing that the love of family will always be above social taboos.

Hong Kong: In the Mood for Love (2001)

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE

by Maria G. Diaz

Love is perhaps one of the hardest feelings to explain.  In the case of romantic love, specifically, the complexity goes even further. It can sometimes be lived to it’s fullest and become a joyful experience for both people involved; it can sometimes be felt by only one person and produce heartbreak and sorrow; or it can sometimes be felt by both people but be impossible to experience due to external circumstances. This last scenario is what Wong Kar-Wai presents in his  film “In the Mood for Love”. A beautiful but painful story of love and loss. A clear representation of the anxiety of an impossible love and the eternal longing of  “what could had been”. 

The film takes place during the early 1960’s in Hong Kong and tells the story of Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) two people who become next door neighbors and discover a number of similarities in circumstances between them that bring them to a special connection. They are both married, but both their respective spouses are constantly away in Japan on business. Through constant (unintentional- at first) encounters they start to discover an inevitable attraction between them and eventually fall in love. A love which they vehemently fight in order to follow their moral principles which especially Mrs. Chan wants to respect even though she has discovered that her husband is having an affair with Mr. Chow’s wife. The irony of the story is magisterial.

The slow but intense pace in which the story is presented, holds every single moment with a magnetic suspense. Not even the director’s camera dares to look straight into the eyes of the protagonists. Perhaps, it fears to break the exquisite tension that every look, every breath, every word creates between them. Passion flows through their blood and the audience can feel it as their own.  

The focus on the details is remarkable. Each scene looks like a work of art itself. The use of lighting, the use of colors, and even the beauty of the dresses used by Maggie Cheung’s character, Mrs. Chan, create the beautiful and sensual atmosphere. In the same way, the use of music is exquisite, accompanying the movements and sensations of the characters at all times. 

The film puts the audience “in the mood for love”! Wong Kar-Wai introduces us into a world of delicate and impossible desires that keeps us glued to our chairs with expectation until the very end.