A sub-par movie with excellent performance best describes Bart Freundlich (Wolves) as slightly disappointing After the Wedding. It’s not that this movie was bad. It was just so far-fetched, yet it tried to take itself oh so seriously. When everything added together, it was hard to take this movie seriously, even when each of our leads did so without batting an eye. It should have been a movie I disliked because of its many flaws. Yet, as flawed as this movie was and how easy it is not to recommend, I still found myself thoroughly entertained and enjoying it.
In this film, Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine, Take This Waltz) plays Isabel, an American who runs an orphanage in a small village in India struggling financially. The orphanage needs more money, so Isabel has been writing grants. Taking interest is Theresa (Julianne Moore – Still Alice, The Hours), a wealthy American who requests Isabel’s present to New York by promising to become the largest benefactor of her organization. She is preparing to sell the company she founded and cash in all of her chips. She wants to meet her first, work out the logistics, and get the paperwork signed. And Isabel has promised all those in India that she’s not returning without a bag of money. But there’s something more to this. And the cards all lie in Theresa’s hands at the moment. This is one of those reviews where the more I say, the more I might give away. And I got to go into the movie not knowing all of these spoilers, so you should also get to.
Theresa happens to invite Isabel the day before her daughter Grace’s (Abby Quinn – Landline) wedding and is invited to attend the wedding. Herein lies a couple of problems. First, who invites someone to a wedding they might have had 15 minutes ago? Second, why is the bride’s mother at work the day before her daughter’s wedding? We do know that Theresa is a driven movie. When she’s not tending to her daughter or much younger twin boys, she’s working on mergers, acquisitions, and whatever else she might do for her job. But even the most successful of business persons would surely take off the day before a child’s wedding.
Theresa’s husband is the likable sculptor artist Oscar (Billy Crudup – Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Alien: Covenant). He’s a great father and a loving husband who isn’t afraid to get in a bathtub in full dress clothes to make out with his wife. But there’s something mysterious to him, too. As shown in the spoiler, when Isabel and Oscar make eye contact for the first time, there is an undeniable connection. These two had met before and had some sort of past. So not only do they have to address this problem, but they also have to address it at Grace’s wedding. This is just one of the problems with the movie. Another was that someone did a lot of work to get these characters together. In addition to trying to get us to believe all of this could happen, Freundlich thinks all of this can happen in such a short period. Characters completely change from who they were at the film’s start to at the end. There’s nothing over the top in terms of production. There’s just too much going on between our characters to be believable.
The performances held the movie together. Williams was better than ever. She was the best actress in the world in 2019, and anything she touches becomes better by having her in it. In this film, her character has plenty of reasons to get upset or sad and does both things, but we never see them. She keeps those emotions hidden just below the surface. And it works so well. Theresa plays her exact opposite. She’s all business and isn’t afraid to cut people down or break their hearts. The two leads interact enough, and it’s not difficult to believe that Isabel follows Theresa’s wishes simply because she needs the money.
But there is more to this movie than acquiring money and getting married. There is a fallout from both of these events. And we have the players to make it work even if the movie’s premise is a little absurd, and how they deal with everything happening is quite unrealistic. This doesn’t even mention how fast Freundlich tries to advance the film. As a result, it leaves After the Wedding feels fragmented, and we have these powerfully intense scenes that occur right after another with no chance for us to breathe. It’s too much. There are too many coincidences. There is too much acceptance of circumstances. We had to suspend disbelief for almost this entire movie. I liked it, but it’s severely flawed and not a movie I can recommend.
Plot 7/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9.5/10
Screenplay 7.5/10
Directing 7.5/10
Cinematography 8/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
67.5%
C
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