Last Wedding (2001)
Three couples in Vancouver navigate their relationships: first jobs, first crises, professional jealousy, an affair, and lack of communication. Noah and Zipporah marry after a brief courtship. She wants to be a singer and stalls out when she fails. He's working hard at a business that may go under. Sarah and Shane are architects; he can't handle her success at a downtown firm. Leslie is a librarian, sour and prickly; her mate, Peter, is a college teacher whose head is turned by a student. Can any of these couples sort things out and stay together? Should they?
Watch Trailer
Free Trial Channels
Cast
Reviews
Waste of time
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Last Wedding (2001): Dir: Bruce Sweeney / Cast: Benjamin Ratner, Tom Scholte, Vincent Gale, Molly Parker, Frida Betrani: Independent film about the last fling of freedom for three males. Benjamin Ratner and Frida Betrani get engaged but he discovers that her ambition is in country music, which she is a failure at. Tom Scholte and Nancy Sivak have problems when he has an affair with one of his literary students. Vincent Gale and Molly Parker are both architects but when she receives a big career break he isn't supportive. This is an interesting study of relationships gone wrong, which unfortunately ends in tragedy. Directed by Bruce Sweeney with a documentary appeal as if observing these relationships. Acting is top notch as it examines the three males and their relationships hopes and ultimate failures, all done with great comic touches. Ratner knows that his wife's love for music isn't doubled as a talent but can he break this to her? Scholte heads straight for trouble when embarking in an affair, which his wife will learn thus leaving him to ponder his reasoning. Gale is threatened by tradition when the thought of his wife being a bigger cash earner. Molly Parker is a great new edition to Sweeney's ensemble. It is film about expectations when it comes to relationships and despite its negative view it certainly hits the point home. Score: 8 / 10
"Noah! Open this (bleeping) door!" Bang! Bang! Bang! "I just want to talk!" The sound of her fists against the door echo through the courtyard like small arms fire. Cowering inside the motel room Noah (Ben Ratner) can only hope Zipporah (Frida Betrani) will go away if he remains absolutely still. No such luck. Peering through the drapes he watches in horror as she walks back from her car with a tire jack in one hand and fire in her eye. Obviously this marriage is in trouble. It began so well, too, with Noah, a salesman for a waterproofing company and Zipporah, an aspiring (and, unfortunately for her, supremely untalented) country singer, gazing into each other's eyes while the rabbi pronounced them man and wife. A few months later the marriage has sprung more leaks than the condo they share in metro Vancouver. Noah's buddies are heading for problems as well. Can Lit prof Peter (Tom Scholte) is cheating on his sedate librarian wife Leslie (Nancy Sivak) with provocative young student Laurel (Marya Delver). Struggling architect Shane (Vincent Gale) feels threatened because his newly graduated girlfriend, Sarah (Molly Parker), also an architect, has landed a job with a high profile firm. Hip, literate and darkly funny, this 2001 entry is the third film from Vancouver writer/director Bruce Sweeney. Sweeney uses the predicaments of his characters to show how relationships among today's affluent young urbanites can crumble under the stress and pressure of modern life, especially if they are not built on a strong foundation to begin with. Lack of communication, sexual betrayal, career envy, Sweeney dissects them all with savage wit and savvy insight. The director allows his cast ample freedom to explore and develop their roles and he is repaid with characters which behave as if they were modelled on real people rather than broadly drawn stereotypes. Parker and Gale won Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscars). However, the whole cast is worthy of merit with Betrani a force of nature as frustrated country singer Zipporah. (With her temperament perhaps she should have considered a career in heavy metal instead.) This is one of those rare movies in which Vancouver gets a chance to play itself. The dialogue is peppered with local references (the Cambie St. bridge, the old Expo 86 site, provincial politics). What Woody Allen does for New York Sweeney does for Vancouver. Twenty years in B.C. have given the Sarnia, Ontario native a feel for the quirky vibe of West Coast life (The movie also resembles an Allen film in the depiction of its male characters as vain, indecisive wimps who bend like willows in the wind while trying to hold their own with strong, purposeful women.) Last Wedding is full of randy humour and a decidedly unromantic view of sex. The scene in which Laurel and Peter discuss Canadian authors while engaged in a dispassionate sexual act is rumoured to be a favourite in certain academic circles.
If the British Columbia film industry has any doubts, I'd say that Last Wedding is a good reason to realize we're moving in the right direction. Director Bruce Sweeney brings his own script to life with a cast of fairly unknown actors [something I find refreshing from the blockbuster Hollywood-isms of today's movie scene.] The story details not only the lives of Noah and Zipporah, a new couple to be wed, but also gives the accounts of two related couples, and the suffering and activities which take them through the course of the film.The actual depth explored isn't uncannily dynamic, but the topic matter, though tired and constantly overdone, is not forced here. The lives and events in Last Wedding are realistic, and not over-dramatized, but sometimes come off as a little awry. The main point, though, is that they are humourous, and that is all which seems to matter in this film.Last Wedding ends rather abruptly, but it didn't really bother me. I had seen all I needed to, and if the film went on, it may have turned a little cliche. I think the BC Industry gets props here, and certainly proves point that you don't need big names for an interesting and fun film.
This is an amusing and believable story about three young couples who are not particularly well suited to each other. They all discover this, but one couple has to get married to find this out. The film is set in Vancouver, which, for once, is not dressed up to be some American city. It was nice to see Canadian references, such as Canada Council grants and the Cambie Street Bridge. The film is very funny in a low keyed, unhysterical, thoroughly Canadian way.