Since youth, every one of us imagines what marriage is, but later, we understand the challenge a couple must face.
Cinema and wedding day may not seem like a redundant combination.
But, for example, Does the roundup of greetings to the bride and groom already work as a perfect fashion choreography?
Especially women picturing this perfect synchronized recitation since the romantic days of their childhood.
From all the church business, the photos with relatives, up to the first wedding night of passion and love.
So, if we’re talking about fiction anyway, why not go and find some movies on the subject?
For the special menu of this reception, we recommend starting with a brilliant American comedy.
Then follows a second of black comedy with a horror side and a splash of action to flavor properly.
Finally, we have a classic dessert of the 50s, directed by the brilliant mind of the great Alfred Hitchcock.
With our best wishes to the couples approaching this challenge, the first step in what is the long marriage way.
1- Father Of The Bride (1991)
A girl returns to America after a long period spent in Rome after graduation.
During the welcome home dinner, she tells the family that she met a boy and fell in love.
When she later announce marrying him, her mother and her little brother are very happy and excited.
But her father is literally shocked, considering the newlyweds too young to understand what marriage really is.
From that moment on, for him, it will be a constant descent into exhilarating and uncontrollable hysteria.
When he knows the future spouse and meets his parents, every aspect of this union inevitably irritates him.
In addition, his wife hires two equally unbearable bizarre and very expensive marriage counselors.
They estimate a steep price, and there are many works to do to receive in the house over 500 guests.
But in reality, all of these inconveniences are just a front to hide his hostility towards his daughter’s choice.
Indeed, his real fear is to lose permanently his beloved baby, now in the process of becoming a woman.
The long road to the fateful is
Father Of The Bride is a comedy about marriage and family for what is almost a 101-textbook for future in-laws.
The movie faces every stage for the preparation of this wedding with irony and intelligence.
From the cake and dress choice, everything succeeds to further anger the shrewd parent.
His opinion is clear just from the beginning, picturing his daughter as a child with pigtails.
The wife tries to tame the temperament, ending only to make him exasperate even more.
When he even ends up in prison after a challenge with a sales assistant for the price of a couple of sandwiches, enough is enough.
Finally, he realizes to stop acting like a baby and shut his mouth not to ruin his daughter’s happiness.
But the tangle of commitments that will follow will burden him so much to fail, sadly, not even to make his best wishes to the bride and groom.
Brilliant comedy performers between the 50 and the 90
The film is an exhilarating remake of the homonymous from the 1950s, universally acclaimed with Elizabeth Taylor and Spencer Tracy.
In their place, we have Steve Martin in the role of the uncontainable father and the young newcomer Kimberly Williams-Paisley as his daughter.
But the real co-protagonist is the divine Diane Keaton in the exhausting role of the wife.
The actress grew up at the school of the great Woody Allen, of which she was a companion in life and his movies.
An experience she used here, fearlessly standing up to the rhythms and the clown mimicry of the histrionic protagonist.
These two enormous stars join in one of the 90s best comedies with a series of irresistible jokes and gags.
Last but not least, it is impossible not to mention Martin Short as the incomprehensible and extravagant wedding organizer.
Father Of The Bride It was a huge success for box offices worldwide, grossing nearly $90 million.
It is a timeless wedding that still works today, as I then recommended to all new couples to understand challenge awaits them.
2– Ready or Not (2019)
On the eve of the wedding, a young married couple receives the wishes of the rich and snobby family of the future husband.
After a lavish ceremony, the two lovers are invited to attend a meeting with their relatives on the first night.
As the tradition of their thriving social games business, the bride must randomly choose a game for their evening.
But in the midst of the general shock, he’s going to pick the wrong card from the deck.
The plaything is the classic game of hide-and-seek but in a much more extreme and lethal variant.
At that point, the whole family arm themselves to the teeth and start hunting the bride to kill her.
With the help of her husband, the poor girl tries to leave the labyrinth of corridors and hidden rooms of the immense mansion.
But the relatives not intended to letting her escape, having a bloody pact with a demon they owe their richness.
Her only hope is to resist until dawn, when the demon will claim in one way or another his blood tribute.
What stress these relatives!
Ready or Not is a phenomenal action/horror comedy for a night that no married couple I think ever wishes.
The atmosphere of crazy cheerfulness is present in every scene by literally flying the minutes up to the credits.
The characters are stereotyped in the usual roles of stupid and arrogant aristocrats but described and staged originally and comically.
A cheerful brigade of cruel and partly incapable, constantly dotted with a tasty and naughty black humor.
The husband is the most interesting group, constantly poised between love for her beauty and loyal devotion to her family.
A double marriage that does not work and revealing what is the true nature of the man after the exhausting night session to hide and seek.
And as in any game that respects itself, there can only be one winner of this challenge, and even at the end of the long night, the couple has to make a choice.
New directors at the starting line
Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett are a couple of directors in the cinema challenge with few but solid movies.
A pleasant confirmation after their episode in naughty V/H/S and the good solo debut with The Line of Evil, horror along the lines of Rosemary’s Baby.
They decide to release the handbrake completely and press the accelerator on irony and exaggerated splatter.
As the protagonist, we have the beautiful and fierce Samara Weaving, grandson of Hugo Weaving, the famous Agent Smith of The Matrix saga.
This bride is not shy and condescending and doesn’t take too much time to pull out the claws and counter-attack.
As the new husband, Mark O’Brien is a white and clean Irish who will change sides more than once before the ending.
Finally, we must also remember the mother head of the family, a magnificent and seraphic Andie Macdowell.
The actress, usually playing the roles of the good and innocent soul, plays here the evilest and ruthless role of her entire career.
Ready or Not makes fun and wickedness its strong point for an evening of pure and enjoyable entertainment.
The audience rewarded the two directors with over $60 million in revenue, largely under the limited production costs.
A worldwide success that launched them into the Hollywood Olympus and productions of the highest budget and level.
The couple now faces the challenge of the imminent Scream saga reboot, another teenage horror created by the late genius Wes Craven.
3- Rebecca (1940)
A young girl works as a lady-in-waiting and handyman for a rich and arrogant matron.
While accompanying her during her holidays in Monte-Carlo, she meets a rich and charming member of the high aristocracy.
The two begin to spend a lot of time together, and their relationship becomes in a few days more and more intimate.
Just before the girl leaves the city, the man amazes her with a sudden marriage proposal.
Indeed, she immediately accepts, despite the bad wishes of her matron, who does not like the newly married couple.
But, enraptured by the idea of living in the magnificent castle of her new love, she lets herself be dragged into a new life away from everything and everyone.
Initially, the bride and groom seem happy, but between them always hovers the shadow of Rebecca, the previous wife who died at sea a year earlier.
In addition, the castle governess lives with the obsession of the woman’s memory, constantly belittling the new wife in comparison.
The girl soon ends up being afraid of both her and the house she doesn’t dare touch, furnished according to the impeccable style of the deceased.
But in reality, the constant bad mood of the husband hides a dark and never-told story of hatred and unhappiness.
A truth inevitably destined to surface, just like the yacht where Rebecca had found death.
A modern Cinderella fighting an invisible ghost
Rebecca is a wonderful modern fairy tale, and a thriller perfectly thought out psychologically.
The love at first sight between the two lovers is immediate and mutual, quickly summoning to a discreet wedding without witnesses.
But the castle, what was supposed to be the cradle of the marriage’s love dream, soon becomes a trap with no way out.
Indeed, the entire mansion seems possessed by the ghost of the mysterious Rebecca, idolized as a goddess by all those who knew her.
An impalpable presence dominates everything and everyone, including the husband himself, who is overshadowed only to hear the name.
This is what the new, shy, and submissive wife feel a constant sense of inadequacy and discouragement in this marriage.
In addition, the stern governess, the wicked witch of this fairy tale, oppresses and disturbs her all the time.
And in the end, it will then be Prince Charming to wake up, this time, facing his demons searching for the truth.
An English director conquering American cinema
This film marks the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock’s partnership with Hollywood cinema.
Although it is filmed in England with English actors and inspired by an English author novel, his first work is with an American major.
As protagonists, he manages to have the magnificent Laurence Olivier and the beautiful and innocent Joan Fontaine.
The couple conquers from the first scene, and the triangle is completed with the superb Judith Anderson, an evil and imperturbable house manager.
Actually, Hitchcock will not speak as one of his best personal thrillers, having slavishly followed the original novel.
Unfortunately for him, it will also be his only film to win an Oscar, for which then he will not even be invited to the award ceremony.
The challenge of this golden prize will never couple well with the great suspense master.
Indeed, the director will attend countless awards giving the coveted award to many colleagues but never win one.
But despite this, his genius will remain immutable over time, forming thousands of new directors in the coming generations.
Directors such as Brian De Palma, virtuous of the camera, clearly inspired by his visionary style and skillful construction of suspense.
A successful marriage between form and substance becoming what is now a way of thinking and making cinema.
