Director Bruce Sweeney’s third and best film to date, Last Wedding takes a wry and witty look at contemporary relationships as it homes in on a trio of Vancouver thirty-something couples. Two of the couples are happily partnered while the third walks into a marital disaster zone. After six months of dating, Noah (Benjamin Ratner) and Zipporah (Frida Betrani) shock everyone by announcing their wedding. Neither their friends nor their families are excited by the news. Noah’s buddies Shane (Vincent Gale) and Peter (Tom Scholte) offer lukewarm congratulations but find themselves looking over their shoulders as their own relationships begin to show signs of strain. Noah’s relations with Zipporah sour when he realises he ‘married a half-wit’, and their new life together soon degenerates into a hilarious battle of wills. Meanwhile, Shane grows bitter when his girlfriend Sarah (Molly Parker) becomes successful, and Peter has an affair with Laurel (waydowntown’s Marya Delver), a student who solicits his opinion on Margaret Laurence’s novels while giving him a hand-job.
Sweeney, who developed his own style of filmmaking from studying the work of Mike Leigh, exposes a wide range of relationship foibles, worries and hang-ups with ruthless efficiency. In Last Wedding, which contrives to be both emotionally raw and very funny, he has mastered the difficult task of moving from comedy to drama and finally farce. This ambitious and dazzlingly inventive film confirms his status as one of the most distinctive filmmakers at work in Canada today.
2001. Colour. Dolby digital stereo. 100 mins.
Plus When the Day Breaks by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis.
1999. 10 mins.