Academy Award winning actress and veteran of South Korean films and TV, Youn Yuh Jung, opened up about her latest Hollywood film ‘The Wedding Banquet’, and said her “personal life story was very involved” in the LGBTQ+ romance-comedy-drama.
A remake of the 1993 Ang Lee film, the Andrew Ahn-directed film revolves around two gay couples — Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-Chan) and Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) — who are faced with challenges that may uproot their relationships.
According to the story’s premise, Angela and Lee have been unlucky with their IVF treatments and cannot afford to pay for another round. Min is closeted and his student visa is expiring soon. When his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris rejects his proposal, Min makes the offer to Angela instead: a green card marriage in exchange for funding Lee’s IVF.
To access his family’s wealth, Min and Angela need to convince his grandmother Ja-Young (Youn) that they’re in love. The astute matriarch sees through the charade, but insists on holding a traditional wedding banquet so the Korean media — and Min’s overseas grandfather — will believe their marriage is real.
Speaking to People, the ‘Minari’ actress Youn said “I am not a stand-up comedian,” “I was playing my role very seriously.”
“My personal life story is very involved with this movie,” the 77-year-old explained. “(South) Korea is a very conservative country. People never come out as gay, publicly or in front of their parents. But my first son happened to be (a) gay person, so I shared my experience between him and me and in the movie with my grandchild and me.”
“So we share this, my personal story with Andrew,” she said of Ahn, who also cowrote the screenplay. “It is real, because (the conversation) between my son and I is actually in that movie.”
Youn, elaborating on the story, told the South China Morning Post about her own son’s homosexuality, saying “My first son came out as gay in 2000 … When New York legalised gay marriage, I threw a wedding for him there. The whole family came to New York because it was still secret in Korea.”
Though she commands a strong presence and wields a powerful influence on the South Korean film and TV industry, the ‘Golden Fish’ actress is still unsure whether her latest film will be accepted back home, given its LGBTQ+ nature and South Korea’s general hostility to the whole thing.
“I hope that Korea will open their minds or wake up,” she said.
‘The Wedding Banquet’ came out in the US on April 18.
