Starring: Dion Birney, Jeanne Kuo Chang Director: Ang Lee

Dig in! This "funny and poignant comedy of manners" (The New York Times), directed and co-written by Oscar(r) nominee* Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility), is an absolutely delicious feast! Winner of the Berlin Film Festival's prestigious Golden Bear, The Wedding Banquet is "top-notch comedy" (Leonard Maltin)! Successful New Yorker Wai Tung and his partner Simonare blissfully happy, except for one thing: Wai Tung's conservative Taiwanese parents are determined he find a nice girl to marry! To please themand get a tax breakhe arranges a sham marriage to Wei Wei, a sexy go-getter in need of a green card. But when his family swoops down for the extravaganza, Wai Tung would do well to remember that at a traditional Chinese wedding banquet, sexual repression takes the night off!

This 1993 international hit by Ang Lee is a funny and poignant story of a gay, Taiwanese-American man who goes to some lengths to fool his visiting family that he's actually straight. The results are far more complicated and entertaining than anyone could have guessed. The film seems all the more rich now since Lee has become a major Hollywood director: that same sensitivity and mild bemusement he brought to such stories of manners as Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm in recent years are in full bloom in this earlier work. --Tom Keogh

I still remember how surprised I was when I saw this movie. Back in the early 90's PC was at it's peak, in addition gay was inextricably linked to AIDS. So imagine my shock when I go to see this movie, a hilarious, touching, movie that gives a wonderfully accurate view of one gay relationship. A couple, one American, one from Taiwan have been together in NYC for years. The Taiwanese man's parents do not know he is gay so keep trying to sign him up for membership in all of these very expensive singles clubs. One of the best scenes is when he and his boyfriend are filling out the application and putting down traits his ideal woman that they think will be impossible to fullfill, "two PHD's, an Opera Singer, speaks 7 languages, ect.." It gets even better when the letter from his parents arrives saying "We've found her" This could have degenerated into a slapstick movie, especially when the parents want to come out to NYC, to throw their son a wedding but it was a Superbly done movie that kept you laughing all the way through. If you have loved any of Ang Lee's Other movies, Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Draggon, Eat Drink Man Woman, you will wonder how you've gone so long without seeing this gem. In addition it received an Oscar Nomination for best foreign film "No Subtitles, it is in English" I have loaned this movie out more times than I can count and always have a difficult time getting it back. My only wish is that more gay movies were this high quality.