Same-Sex Marriage Asian American Style

By Jana Monji

This month, two films take on same-sex love and marriage in the Asian American communities: The Wedding Banquet and A Nice Indian Boy. Both are warm and sometimes comical looks at families trying to navigate the kind of marriage that may not be acceptable in the countries their cultures come from.

You know this updated remake of The Wedding Banquet is heading for a happy ending. If you’re at all familiar with the original, the ending won’t come as a big surprise, but this film is all about the journey.

The original 1993 film came out at a time when same-sex marriage was not legal in the United States. Taiwan-born Ang Lee directed and co-wrote the award-wining Oscar-nominated film with Taiwanese screenwriter and political activist Neil Peng and Detroit-born James Schamus.

That film was about a Manhattan-based bisexual Taiwanese man Gao Wai-Tung (played by Winston Chao) who is convinced by his gay Jewish partner Simon (Mitchell Lichtenstein) to marry a poor mainland Chinese woman, Gu Wei-Wei (May Chin) so she can secure a green card. This will satisfy Wai-Tung’s parents who supposedly don’t know he is gay and are eager to have a grandchild.

When the parents learn of the impending nuptials, they arrive in New York City and insist and holding an extravagant wedding banquet.

Schamus returns, collaborating with Korean American director Andrew Ahn on the screenplay for this remake. The Los Angeles-born and raised Ahn transports the action to Seattle. Instead of one same-sex couple, we have two. Lee (Lily Gladstone) is an activist and lives with her life partner, Chinese American Angela (Kelly Marie Tran). Chris (Bowen Yang) and Korean artist Min (Han Gi-chan) live in the renovated garage of Lee’s home. Chris and Angela were besties in college and even had one experimental sexual fling.

Angela’s mother May Chen (Joan Chen) is every LGBTQ+ person’s dream, but is presented here as her daughter’s nightmare. The mother is so ultra supportive that she honored at a banquet in the beginning of the film, yet the pragmatic Angela considers this mothering smothering.

Angela and Lee are attempting to have a baby via IVF with Lee as the mother, but that’s expensive and Lee’s age may be a factor in that failure. With Min’s family calling him back home, Angela agrees to marry Min so that he can have a green card. In return, Min, whose family is ultra rich, provides funds for another IVF attempt. When Min breaks the news of his courthouse marriage,  Min’s grandmother (Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-Jung) decides to come to the US and stage a traditional Korean wedding banquet. 

Ahn and Schamus’ screenplay fully acknowledges what has changed in the world in over 30 years. There’s some comfort in thinking that despite what they may say in public, parents and, in this case, grandparents can be accepting and loving, even if same-sex marriage is not legal in South Korea.

We get glimpses of the differences between Chinese and Korean cultures in a way that is both informative, but not heavily expositional. As Chris, Yang is both giddy and yet afraid of moving forward into the maturity of commitment in both his academic program and his love life.

As the object of Chris’ affection Han’s Min is adorable and believably sincere. Tran’s Angela provides the heavier tones in this script, from her troubled relationship with Chen’s May to her angst over becoming a mother with Gladstone’s Lee. Youn brings in a light touch of earned wisdom as the grandmother.

As director, Ahn keeps all the action and nuanced relationships engaging. There are places where the pacing could have been tightened up and the cinematography could have been better, but overall this is an engaging look at same-sex love and diversity in the Asian American community. 

A Nice Indian Boy opened on 4 April 2025, having premiered at South by Southwest in 2024. The film centers on what many Indian American mothers would consider a perfect catch: a polite Indian American doctor on good terms with his parents.

But after witnessing his sister’s marriage to a nice Indian boy, that doctor, Naveen (Koran Soni), admits that he too is looking for a nice Indian boy. In this film, that boy comes in a very White package, Jay Kurunkar (Jonathan Groff).

Jay, a photographer, was adopted by Indian American parents after bouncing around foster homes. While Naveen sometimes, like many second-generation Asian Americans, feels embarrassed by his parents and their traditional culture, Jay totally embraces Indian culture, including Bollywood.

Jay loves the 1995 Hindi-language musical romance, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ).  Musical theater loves might be disappointed that Groff doesn’t get to be in a full-blown Bollywood production in this film, but there is song and dance.

Director Roshan Sethi previously worked with Soni on the COVID-19 dramedy, 7 Days, but people will be more familiar with Soni from his appearances in the Deadpool series as Dopinder, the NYC taxi driver.  Writers Eric Randall and Madhuri Shekar (3 Body Problem, 2024, and Evil Eye, 2020) look at all aspects of love, including the arranged marriage of Naveen’s parents. Sethi’s direction brings nuanced performances from all the characters and there’s great chemistry between Groff’s Jay and Soni’s Naveen.

Both films, The Wedding Banquet and A Nice Indian Boy provide much needed representation of LGBTQ+ Asian Americans in love and marriage surrounded by loving families. These films provide hopeful, humorous journeys toward marital happiness.

The Wedding Banquet premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of this year where it won the Sundance Institute/Amazon Studios Producers Award.  The film will be released on 18 April 2025 in the US. 

A Nice Indian Boy is currently playing in Los Angeles. 

For more film reviews from this author, visit AgeOfTheGeek.org.