There are several new films opening today, and of the ones I have already seen, my favorite by far would have to be Confetti, a comedy that apparently came out in its native Britain four months ago and has since opened in Australia and Germany, as well.
I found the film a pleasant surprise when I saw it a few days ago. The film is an improvised mockumentary — not unlike the films of Christopher Guest — about a wedding competition put on by a magazine. But where Guest’s films have been rather lazy and superficial lately, I found that Confetti actually had … well, not depth, exactly, but you could at least believe in these characters and even be affected by them. They feel like real people. In fact, I actually shed a few tears during one of the climactic weddings, and I don’t think Guest’s films have ever had that effect on me.
The film follows three couples who have been selected for a “most original wedding” competition, and easily the most recognizable member of the cast would have to be Martin Freeman (The Office, Love Actually, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), who plays the male half of a couple that wants to have a wedding like an old-fashioned Busby Berkeley musical. Of the two other couples in the contest, one is highly — highly — competitive and wants a tennis-themed wedding, while the other wants a “naturist” wedding and is rather upset when the magazine tells them they must wear clothes during the ceremony (despite the fact that the magazine knew they wanted a “naturist” wedding when they were selected for the competition). So, yeah, there is lots of nudity in this film, but to the film’s credit, absolutely none of it is sexualized.
As with the Christopher Guest films, there are a number of scenes where you find yourself thinking that there wouldn’t really have been a documentary crew there to capture certain moments — but then, given our exhibitionist age, who knows? At any rate, there are all sorts of little character moments that rang true, for me.
Two moments that particularly linger in my mind: One, the way one of the couples, on the verge of breaking up from the stress of planning the wedding, goes for pre-marital counselling — and when one half of the couple pronounces A.K.A. as “ah-kah”, the other says “ay-kay-ay” in a soft, but nonetheless resentful, voice; those sorts of tiny, nit-picky things really can aggravate a situation, like grains of sand under the tongue. And two, the scene where one of the two gay wedding planners consoles his partner.
And then there is the part that made me cry a few tears, albeit of joy. But I can’t talk about that without giving the moment away. Not because it’s a major spoiler or anything like that, just because … I want to let it unfold, if you should happen to see it.
My enjoyment was no doubt helped also by the fact that the cast includes a few Mike Leigh veterans, including Ron Cook and Alison Steadman as the divorced parents of one of the brides. They, like the other actors, keep the humour grounded in reality — however delightfully exaggerated that reality should happen to be.
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