My Mother's Wedding

by Mike McGranaghan

Oscar-nominated actress Kristin Scott Thomas makes her directorial debut with My Mother’s Wedding, and the results are both star-studded and disappointing. The film was made to honor her father and stepfather, both of whom were pilots in the Royal Navy. That personal connection probably helped to secure a great cast, but the material unfortunately lets the actors down.

Diana (played by the director herself) is a two-time widow about to embark on her third trip down the aisle. The previous marriages yielded three daughters. Katherine (Scarlett Johansson) is a high-ranking officer in the Royal Navy. Victoria (Sienna Miller) is a famous movie star with an unimpressive resume. Georgina (Emily Beecham) is married to a man who cheats on her. Everyone gathers together for the nuptials, and, because this is a familial drama, old secrets and long-standing resentments come out.

You certainly can’t ignore a movie that brings those four actresses together. They are the best things about My Mother’s Wedding. Each of them does sincere, committed work, and seeing them onscreen together in various groupings offers a certain level of satisfaction. Scenes that focus on the central quartet are the most successful, as they give the stars room to develop a potentially interesting family dynamic. Because the performers have such different onscreen personas, there’s a spark in their shared scenes that’s otherwise missing.

And that is because the screenplay keeps introducing new characters. So many, in fact, that it becomes difficult to keep track of them all. A couple seem important briefly, then disappear from the movie altogether. Others have no obvious purpose whatsoever. We watch as the sisters interact with these people, but given that they’re distractions from the main plot, it feels like time wasted. We care about the core family members, not the irrelevant side players.

The film’s screenplay, written by Scott Thomas and John Micklethwait, uncomfortably veers between scenes of emotional honesty and moments of lame comedy. (Every joke about Victoria’s fame falls especially flat.) It’s clearly going for that “true to life” vibe where humor and heartache can coexist simultaneously. The comedic scenes, however, pale greatly in comparison to the dramatic ones. A sequence in which Diana tells off her daughters in a cemetery provides a glimpse of what might have been had the dopey humor been toned down.

My Mother’s Wedding is one of those movies that’s just good enough to make you wish it was better. Too many plot detours bog it down, despite the best efforts of the appealing leads.

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