Movie director Ang Lee is best known for his movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. However, the popular martial arts film was not Lee's first success.
In 1993, the Taiwanese filmmaker directed a somewhat different type of movie, The Wedding Banquet, shown last night to Penn students as part of the United Minority Council-sponsored Unity Week.
Filmed in a combination of Mandarin Chinese and English, the Oscar-nominated movie for Best Foreign Film tells the story of an Asian immigrant who is dating a Caucasian male in Manhattan.
College senior Sara Fernandes-Taylor of ALLIES, an organization that promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender concerns and a sponsor of the event, said the movie "was keeping with the mission of Unity Week -- celebrating each other's cultures."
The film's main character, Wei-Tung, struggles with keeping his homosexuality a secret from his conservative Taiwanese parents.
Because of cultural pressure and expectations, Wei-Tung decides to marry a female friend to appease his parents. His life becomes decidedly more complicated when his parents surprise him with a visit and tell him of plans for an elaborate wedding.
The Wedding Banquet demonstrates common problems and misconceptions of homosexuality through Wei-Tung, who complains, "It's stupid, all these lies, but I'm used to it." When his mother discovers he is homosexual, she asks, "What went wrong?... Maybe it's only temporary."
The film also discusses conflicts and stereotypes in Asian, particularly Chinese and Taiwanese, culture. Language is a prominent problem for Simon, the boyfriend. He presents a gift to Wei-Tung's mother in broken Chinese. "This facial cream, uh, special, uh, for old ladies," he says.
"There were a lot of stereotypes, but a lot of them were not false," said Taiwanese College junior Rui Liu of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition, another sponsor of the event.
Engineering graduate student Cyrus Najmabadi remarked, "I liked how the stereotypes were presented... but then were broken down."
One stereotype Lee breaks down is that of the quiet, conservative Asian. In the wedding banquet scene of the film, hundreds of Asians explode in drunken revelry. Lee makes a cameo as a guest at the banquet who says to surprised caucasians, "This is from 5,000 years of sexual repression."
Overall, students agreed that the film was not only funny, but also true to life.
"It's kind of personal," College and Wharton senior Diana Hong said. "Just the struggle the character had -- how much do you lie to your parents to keep them happy and how do you balance two things that are very important to you?"
