“The Wedding Banquet” may not be the first—or second, or fifth—Ang Lee film that comes to mind upon mention of the Taiwanese legend’s name, but it’s certainly a significant one in his artistic journey. It was Lee’s first Oscar-nominated film, the first of two Lee films to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and also the first of his films to release theatrically in the United States.

This last point is pertinent because “The Wedding Banquet,” as the middle film in Lee’s “Father Knows Best” trilogy, is fundamentally tied to the cultural friction experienced by a Taiwanese-American reckoning with familial duty in a space that feels more like home than his homeland ever did. What may then seem sacrilegious—an American remake—is perhaps the ideal platform upon which to develop Lee’s blueprint for the modern day, if such a...