LOS ANGELES, April 17 (UPI) -- Youn Yuh-jung and Joan Chen say their characters in The Wedding Banquet, in theaters Friday, are open to a transition from traditional Asian cultures to more modern ideas. The film, a remake of the 1993 Ang Lee romantic comedy, is about two gay friends, a man and a woman, who marry each other to satisfy their traditional families.
Youn plays Ja-Youn, the grandmother of the groom, Min (Han Gi-Chan), who is marrying his friend Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) for a green card. Ja-Youn is aware of the situation but agrees to allow the marriage so the extended families can enjoy a traditional wedding.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Youn, an Oscar winner for Minari, said she understands her generation of Koreans might not accept Min for being gay. It made sense, therefore, for Ja-Youn to agree to the ruse.
"I knew it all along," Youn said of her character. "He was different when he was little. So I think her way to approach her grandson was very smart and wise."
Chen plays Angela's mother, May Chen, who is so supportive it sometimes embarrasses Angela. Chen said she imagined a backstory where May was overcompensating for her past stubbornness as a traditional Chinese woman.
"The background story is that she did not accept her daughter to start out with," Chen said. "She refused to talk about it. She refused to believe it. She refused to accept it for quite a while."
Chen added that May, who is a widow, took her efforts to get closer to Angela to the extreme after her husband's death.
"She slowly began to accept and then try to make up for her failures and for hurting her daughter by overdoing it almost," Chen said. "Now she is the mother of all gays and that's part of I guess the comedy."
In the film, Min is actually in a relationship with Chris (Bowen Yang), who does not want to get married. Meanwhile, Angela and her girlfriend Lee (Lily Gladstone) are trying to get pregnant, but Lee keeps undergoing unsuccessful in vitro fertilization. Angela agrees to marry Min after he offers to pay for another round of IVF.
What the four friends don't expect is Ja-Youn surprising them by coming to visit from Korea ahead of the wedding. The two couples try to convince her that Angela and Min are in love, but the grandmother is not fooled.
"She's smarter than them," Youn said. "I'm much older than them so I have more experience than them and I found out what they were planning to do."
During the wedding, Min and Angela participate in traditional ceremonies from Korean and Chinese culture, sometimes with comical mishaps. Chen said modern Chinese weddings tend to blend traditions with new elements anyway.
"Even when it's a Chinese traditional wedding, it's mixed," Chen said. "It can be a very pancultural [event]. People just make whatever weddings they want to make, because the traditional weddings here, you do in the church. Back in China, we didn't go to church. I was brought up a Communist so people take liberty."
Chen said she also enjoyed learning about the traditional Korean ceremonies. Youn, who was married from 1974 to 1987, said her wedding did not involve those traditions.
"In my time, we don't do that," she said.
Both Chen and Youn had seen the original 1993 version of The Wedding Banquet before starring in the remake. In the '90s, Chen was already acting in films like The Last Emperor, TV's Twin Peaks and its film prequel Fire Walk With Me.
Chen considers the original film important because there were "so few Asian faces on the screen in America, let alone Asian gay face as the leading man."
Youn, meanwhile, began acting on Korean television in the '70s. She said her son confirmed they watched the original Wedding Banquet together but she does not remember specifics.
"If he says so, he's much younger than me, so he's saying the truth but I don't remember the details," Youn said. "It was back in 1993."
Many of Chen's Twin Peaks co-stars returned in the director's 2017 Showtime revival series, but Chen was not involved. Chen said the last time she spoke with Lynch was when they discussed that series. Lynch died in January.
"My shot was in it from the first, so still he used one shot of me from the past," Chen said. "That was the very last communication that we had. All along, I've always admired him as such a great and pure artist."
