★★★ by Dylan Jones
After The Wedding is Bart Freundlich’s remake of the 2006 Danish drama Efter brylluppet (same meaning). While the original was deft, dark and daring, the Hollywood version, as Hollywood versions so often are, is a little glossier and a little less nuanced.
Isabel (Michelle Williams) an idealistic but uptight young woman, runs an orphanage in Kolkata. She travels to New York after a promising donation offer from powerful and at times arrogant magnate Theresa (Julianne Moore).
Theresa invites Isabel to her daughter’s wedding to “get to know her better” much to Isabel’s tight-lipped annoyance – she hates the superficial glitz and vulgar wealth of New York and Theresa’s lifestyle and wants to get back to the golden sunshine of India and the children she cares deeply for.
However, as the wedding progresses and unexpected encounters unfold, emotional familial ties embroil Isabel and the characters around her in a Shakespearean unraveling of events.
It’s an at times ponderously executed story, acted out by two of the world’s most accomplished performers. The end result is the cinematic equivalent of a Sunday roast dinner. Some parts delicious and unforgettable, others dull and chewy.
Scenes that should be gut-wrenchingly dramatic are too drawn out and ponderous, losing the intensity which has so expertly executed by the original. There’s nothing glaringly wrong with it per-se, there’s just…something missing.
Moore and Williams’s performances however, make up for it and then some. Moore conveys a wonderfully layered performance, with the trademark combo of strength and vulnerability she always does so well. Perhaps the movie’s most memorable scene is a bedroom breakdown where the character finally succumbs to her fate; it’s devastating to the point of disturbing, and sticks with you not just as you leave the cinema, but for days afterwards.
Williams though, is the real revelation. It’s an Oscar-worthy performance, a masterclass in emotional anguish, tempered by the character’s inability to show emotion.
In all in all, it’s a great example of how an accomplished cast can irrevocably rescue a movie. Without Moore and Williams, After The Wedding would have been a visually pleasing but flat, poorly-executed failure. With them, it’s a distinctly watchable and at time unforgettably emotive drama.
After The Wedding is iut in UK cinemas on November 1st.
