The Rose Award for Best Feature
The Wedding Banquet
Film: The Wedding Banquet (2025)
Director: Andrew Ahn
Screenplay by: Andrew Ahn and James Schamus
Starring: Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, JOAN CHEN (*we are highlighting Joans this spring on Ms. W Film Club*), Youn Yuh-Jung, Bobo Le, Han Gi-Chan
Dear Cast and Crew of The Wedding Banquet,
I have never given out an award on my film club page before.
Let me tell you a little bit about me, before you receive this award.
I am strange, interesting, unpredictable-ish, loving, kind, thoughtful, and a little messy. Like, this week, I had ants in my kitchen, and it took me 2-3 days to go to the right store to get the ant traps. I kept having the story that Barack Obama tells in my head, about the time that Michelle (his wife, ya know) called him at his prestigious job as senator (or something like that) and told him that on the way home, he had to pick up ant traps. He was talking about ego in that story. How he can’t get too puffed up in his head, because he has this wife who grounds him. I don’t have a wife who grounds me, but I do have a best friend who talks me down from my rambling thoughts over the phone. I have not told her about the ant problem in the kitchen, but I’m sure she would have said to get ant traps. It was just—I was overwhelmed. It is spring now, and there is so much life outside. And that life is finding its way inside, because my counter had a rolled up bag of BBQ potato chips that I shouldn’t have been eating, but was indulging in anyway, because they are BBQ potato chips. Kettle ones or something, so they’re a more highfalutin kind and I feel less guilty consuming them alongside a cheese sandwich.
The other problem with the ants was that I don’t live near any big chain stores. So I went to the co-op and purchased baking soda, because something online said you can kill ants with a baking soda and sugar mixture. You can also put tea tree oil in a spray bottle. I did both of those things, but it wasn’t enough.
It’s just…life is so life. It’s so big and gorgeous, and now it’s spring, and all of these birds are perching on the tree outside my window, and sometimes the birds get in fights. Weeks ago, I saw several occasions where one bird chased another, which I assumed was a mating ritual. I saw a black caterpillar last night that was so fuzzy! And there is a big carpenter bee flying outside my window now. I don’t want to kill ants, but they were eating my cat’s food and even getting on my arm when I made my coffee, and I don’t want them in the honey I use for coffee, so I had to trudge to the big chain store yesterday after I watched your movie to get the ant traps (which seem to be working, so far).
I was overwhelmed before I saw your movie, Wedding Banquet Cast and Crew. I will tell you—I still am a little overwhelmed. Yesterday the electricity went out in the school where I teach and things got quiet for a while during my prep period, and that was nice, and I was reading this book by Richard Rohr called The Wisdom Pattern. It is so perfect in explaining who we are as a collective, and where we’ve gone wrong, and how we can still have hope because smart people might outweigh the ignorant ones, and because things must fall apart in order to be rebuilt better. And so I was reading that, and feeling all welled up inside with its abundant truth, and then I saw in a news headline that the singer Jill Sobule died in a house-fire in Minnesota, at the age of 66. Well, I lost it a bit there, and no one was around, and I was able to cry a bunch, because I don’t want Jill Sobule to die in a house-fire. She sang that song “I Kissed a Girl” in the 90s, and my aunt came out as gay right around that time, and she was excited about this song that essentially vindicated her in a cute way—without it being so dramatic and scary. My family at the time was grappling with this new discovery, and my aunt was being very patient about talking to people in the family about being gay. I remember just guessing, because she and her girlfriend were at my grandmother’s house, and it was obvious to me that they were a couple. And there was nothing in my mind wrong with it, and I didn’t know why anyone else would have an issue with it. My aunt wanted to tell me herself, and she’d made some efforts through family members, and I just finally said, “Okay, no big deal. She’s happy. That’s great. I like her partner.”
So anyway, that was my introduction to Jill Sobule when I was a teenager and then I listened to her other music, and I had her album, and of course WXPN (the UPenn radio staton in Philadelphia) played Jill Sobule all the time, and her music was so fun and sweet.
So, Jill Sobule dying in a housefire sounds really tragic. It sounds really lonely and sad, even though I have no idea if she was lonely and sad. I just broke a little when I read it, and so I immediately decided to go see your movie The Wedding Banquet, not because it had any issues about gay, lesbian, and transgender people, but because it was playing at the right time and it would cheer me up. It would be a kind of medicine for a week of abundant life and knowing and truth, and uncovering and recovering. Order, disorder, reorder (says progressive and awakened Franciscan priest Richard Rohr).
And damn, it took 48 minutes in after-school traffic, but I got my popcorn, and I snuck a cup of coffee into the theater, and I watched your movie and I am giving you an award for being so f***ing awesome. There’s awesome, and there’s f***ing awesome. It was just fun, and colorful, and real. So real. It’s so clear that there is love emanating from all of these actors, and love has infused this film with such character and wit and joy and truth and sadness and all that life is.
The depth and humor of the characters…. The beauty of the characters…. The acting is superb! I especially love the older mom figures: Youn Yuh-Jung, who plays Ja-Jong, and Joan Chen, who plays May Chen. And these parent-child relationships that are complicated, yet infused with love and honesty in moments when conflicts rise to the surface. I have never seen Youn Yuh-Jung or Joan Chen in a movie before, so this was my introduction to them and they were striking in their beauty and depth and radiance. But I can’t leave out Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Angela—who is trying to live her life in a normal way, but has this mom who is so over-excited about having an LGBTQ daughter. I have seen Lily Gladstone before, and all of her performances seem marked with a quiet bravery and centeredness that can’t be shaken. Then, of course, there was Bowen Yang, as Chris, who is a big ole commitment-phobe with a really cool earring. He’s so fun. I want to hang out with him in a forest or a bar (but I don’t drink hard liquor, just warning you. No shots for me). And Han Gi-Chan as Min, who is cute and thoughtful and able to be vulnerable, and even whimsical, who shoulders the burden of this family estate-thing, yet doesn’t really care about money and titles the way other people do. He just wants to make art. Oh, and Bobo Le as Kendall is the younger friend/sister that everyone wants because you get to feel like you know things when you advise her, but secretly she is advising you.
I just had so much fun, and I cried tears of joy and sadness, and I got to see Washington’s greenery, which I miss. I love Washington state’s greenery—it’s like no other place. And if someone is ever gifting that house from the movie, may I raise my hand and put in a bid? It’s a great house. It’s a great setting. The movie is pure joy and personhood and reality and beauty and love and friendship and commitment on the screen.
It could almost be cheesy. It’s so close, but it is not cheesy. And I commend you for walking that line. If it were a cheese, though? I’d say it is an American cheese, that just works on almost everything except Chinese food. (I have long wondered what it would taste like to melt American cheese on Chinese food and I just think it’s a bad idea.)
Anyway, as I was watching the movie, I decided I was giving it an award. I don’t have a statue of a man in gold to give you, and there is no academy alongside me here, but I do have artwork I’ve made myself. So if I ever meet any of you, I want you to know, that I have this painting called “Inner child” that is yours. (And if I never meet you, someone else is gonna get it because I doubt I can keep it forever, though it so wonderfully captures the indigo color of the sixth-eye chakra.)
Oh, hey, Chris, from the movie! Don’t think I didn’t see your Tori Amos from the Choirgirl Hotel t-shirt, okay? I was at a show during that tour. Let’s f***ing play Tori Amos, Chris. Let’s play a lot of Tori Amos.
Anyway, you guys show what life is and the sweetness it can be. People need to see that. People don’t always know. I have to mention this scripture passage from Jesus because I started reading a lot of Jesus’s words (translated out of his original words, mostly) years ago to understand who we are as a collective of people. And there is a Parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22) that I always got instantly and loved. Not everyone gets Jesus, but gay people usually get Jesus better than the rest of us hetero-normative types.
In the parable, there’s a guy with all this power and he wants to celebrate with other people. It’s like, natural to celebrate and experience joy! And hope! But everyone is so busy and no one comes to his party. So he decides that instead of his regular friends, he’s going to get people off the street. Any person who wants to come, can come to his party! (He’s like Jay Gatsby except a little more vindictive.) And then he finally gets the party right, with people celebrating and having fun, and there is this one guy who is ruining the party. The guy can’t dance or something. The guy’s all stiff and judgmental, and the powerful man says “Why are you here without wedding clothes?” The man doesn’t know what to say, because he really has no excuse for his lameness. He’s just lame.
So the powerful guy has him taken away, because no one should be destroying the fun. We are here to live life and live it fully! We are meant to enjoy and celebrate and feast when we can feast! Especially when rich guys shell out all that generosity.
Therefore, let’s all eat, and feast, and be merry while we can. Let’s bring people in droves to the theater for The Wedding Banquet, directed by this younger-than-me director Andrew Ahn, who has all these great little shots of quiet mise-en-scene-ness that I liked so much.
I’m telling you—I’m not a rich guy who can bring people to a big wedding party—but I think there are rich guys who can do it. So I hereby give you, The Wedding Banquet Cast and Crew, this Rose Award for Best Picture of 2025 (I ‘ve made my decision—I’m not chaing it), and you, hereby, shall find a rich guy to put people on busses and give them free popcorn and coffee and Twizzlers to watch your movie. (Will Twizzlers fund that deal? What are their ethics? I don’t really know, I have a little unfortunate penchant for Twizzlers sometimes when I’m feeling feisty.)
Cheers, good tidings, and goodnight.
I mean, good day.
Love,
Ms. Wonderful
And below, your Saturday Vinyl. All one record today. Wisecrack by the lovely radical sweet Haley Blais (pronounced Blay).
Yeah, she signed it for me. We talked at the WXPN show. Uh-huh.
And here’s some Richard Rohr and some poetry by Jericho Brown for your Wonderful Weekend!
Do you know what CFBIT is? Figure it out.
Next week—we continue our Joan-Land Adventure with Working Girl on the Rose Woods videocast. Subscribe to stay abreast.
And catch up on the archives of the Ms. Wonderful Film Club Podcast on Apple or Spotify. This week I shared from the archive: “What Is Manhood” from the 2023 post about Bruiser.
(*Pick and choose what you want to look through, here, this is a wealth.)