Advertisement
The Wedding Banquet’s Youn Yuh-jung on channelling her past to play gay man’s grandmother
The Oscar-winning 78-year-old talks about her son coming out and bringing intense emotion to Andrew Ahn’s new remake of the 1993 romcom
Reading Time:5 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
In Ang Lee’s 1993 film The Wedding Banquet, a bisexual man tries to hide his boyfriend from his parents by marrying a Chinese immigrant who needs a green card.
In Andrew Ahn’s new remake of the film, which opens in cinemas in the United States on April 18, the stakes have been doubled, with two gay couples whose differing needs and goals have led them to the brink of breaking up. That is before their families get involved.
Director and co-writer Ahn assembled a stellar cast for the movie, including Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live and Wicked; Lily Gladstone, nominated for an Oscar for her role in 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon; Kelly Marie Tran, known for her work in Star Wars films The Rise of Skywalker and The Last Jedi; and Korean actor Han Gi-chan (Where Your Eyes Linger).
Joining them are The Last Emperor star and director Joan Chen, and Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung.
The last few years have been remarkable for Youn. In 2021, she won the best supporting actress Oscar for Korean-American family drama Minari, and she received much acclaim for her role in the 2022 miniseries Pachinko.
In The Wedding Banquet she plays a grandmother from a notoriously private and conservative wealthy family.
Advertisement