Lee desperately wants to be a mother. But, after two failed in vitro fertilization attempts, she’s running out of options. She and her girlfriend, Angela, just don’t have the money for another IVF procedure.
But they do have a gay friend named Min. The Korean man is in a bit of a predicament: His student visa is set to expire soon. And when it does, his grandparents plan on bringing him back to Korea to help run the family corporation. To deal with both issues, Min decided to propose to his boyfriend, Chris. But Chris didn’t want their relationship to be merely for the sake of a green card.
That’s why Lee and Min hatched a plan that’d fix both of their woes: What if Min “married” Angela?
They could use the fake marriage to get Min his green card and convince his grandparents to allow him to stay with his wife. And in return, Min would use some of his family’s money to pay for another IVF procedure for Lee. The plan is foolproof.
Until Min’s grandmother comes to visit the couple.
Angela’s mother, May Chen, longs to love her daughter unconditionally and to make up for her mistakes in the past. In fact, her poor parenting has led to Angela’s fear that she won’t be a good mom either. That said, the film also reminds us our parents’ mistakes don’t define us or predetermine our success at raising kids.
Lee advises Angela that she has a simmering problem: Instead of addressing problems she has in relationships, Angela tends to let unresolved issues boil inside her. Following this admission, Angela eventually tells the truth about her feelings, which allows communication to occur.
A poster references the demon Lilith.
A man and woman wake up in bed together after a forgotten, drunken night of sex. They’re both unclothed, and we see the man’s rear. We also see the man from the front, covering himself with his hands. He dresses himself in his underwear, and he remains seen that way for the rest of the scene.
We see a woman’s breasts in a picture, and we also see a depiction of a naked woman on a poster. When Lee showers, we see the top of her breasts.
Two men passionately kiss. We also see two different lesbian women kiss their partners. Likewise, a picture shows Angela and Lee kissing. Angela drinks from a straw made to look like male genitalia. A man dances in his underwear at a nightclub. We see a male perform in drag. A woman thrusts her rear at a mascot while dancing. Two men wake up in bed together.
May Chen talks about her daughter’s partner’s usage of IVF, commenting on the quality of the donor’s sperm. We hear a conversation about someone getting caught by her mother watching lesbian pornography.
There’s a joke about oral sex. We’re told Chris is writing a dissertation in “queer theory.” Someone jokes that a man and woman will have “15 nonbinary children.” A woman describes her son as “pansexual.” People attend an LGBT gala. We’re told that Chris and Angela once had sex.
A man and woman briefly consider aborting their child.
We hear both the f-word and s-word about 20 times each. Other profanities include “a–,” “b–ch,” “d-ck,” “d–n,” “h—” and “crap.” God’s name is taken in vain 15 times. Likewise, Jesus’ name is misused four times.
People drink shots, wine and beer on several occasions. A man and woman get drunk.
A woman suffers two failed in vitro fertilization implantations (And for anyone considering this controversial method of fertilization, both Focus on the Family and The Daily Citizen provide comprehensive summaries about its inherent ethical issues and risks).
A woman vomits on a man onscreen. Someone advocates lying to another character. Part of Min’s ruse includes tricking his grandfather out of some money.
Everyone wants to feel loved. But the way our secular culture defines love has increasingly drifted from how Scripture defines it, becoming a pale imitation of what God truly desires for us. And we see that reality illustrated in The Wedding Banquet.
The reason our increasingly secular society struggles so much with love is, ultimately, because God is love, and in rejecting God, society rejects love itself.
It’s a sad irony, really. Because as much as our culture despises God, many within it love love—or at least their idea of love. But it’s a definition of love that’s necessarily disconnected from God and remade into its own image.
For most secular folks today, this redefinition of what love is makes it essentially synonymous with words such as “acceptance” or “affirmation.” In other words, culture unties love from the pursuit of God’s objective good and knots it firmly to the pursuit of each individual’s subjective feelings about what is good.
I think it’s helpful to remember that when watching films like The Wedding Banquet. We see characters who long for that objective, divine love. But their worldview has been shaped by a culture in which love has been redefined as merely affirming us where we are.
The problem is that to find love, one must reach high up to it, to the One from whom it ultimately flows—an action that is diametrically opposite that complacent acceptance of where we sit when we are, by nature, a race stained by selfish desires and sin. And without that action, secular love can only reach as high as the idea of acceptance—that you can do your thing, and I’ll do mine. And if our goals happen to align and we find each other physically attractive, then that must be love.
That’s why by the end of this film, in which the idea of love is ultimately rooted in acceptance, its resolution feels … empty. Yes, there are sweet moments of forgiveness, kindness and patience, all attributes flowing from love. Yet this story ultimately misses the mark because it tells viewers that love equals little more than acceptance, doing so without any understanding of how sin distorts that vision of love.
In contrast, Jesus offered radical grace to the woman caught in adultery in John 8, and He challenged her accusers to cast the first stone if they were without sin. But that expression of grace was immediately followed by the challenge of truth: “Neither do I [condemn you]. Now go and sin no more” (John 8:11). Godly love doesn’t affirm someone’s choices at the expense of what is objectively good and true.
In a broken world filled with people stained by the disease of sin, what is most loving isn’t affirmation, leaving us stuck in that deathly illness which inflicts us all. Rather, in that broken state, true love encourages us to seek after the Cure for our ailment, the One who is objective Love Himself.
And as much as it tries, The Wedding Banquet hasn’t quite found true love. And in addition to its misguided romantic worldview, viewers will also find a lot of crass and explicit content at this wedding party, too.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
