It is a truth universally acknowledged that mainstream Hollywood comedies aren’t that amusing. With an established funny person in the lead and a gimmicky set-up, they start well. Then there is an obligation for the main character to learn stuff (“What I wanted was right in front of me”’) and the popcorn box suddenly becomes a barf bag. Then there’s an action sequence, also not funny.
Bridesmaids, developed by comedienne-writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumalo under the aegis of producer Judd Apatow, is the exception. It is a hoot fest. You laugh, you laugh some more, you embrace the person next to you for buying your ticket. (“Whaddya mean, you didn’t pay? What’s Orange Wednesday?”) Apatow produces observational comedies. His writers take an idea, run with it and then run even further. Moreover, his advice on the “learning curve” is to bury it. Have a scene where someone makes a cake to show how they have moved on, but then follow it with more funny stuff.
As the title suggests, Bridesmaids is a wedding comedy, focusing on maid of honour Annie (Wiig) and her attempt to give her newly-engaged childhood best friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph) a big send-off. The problem is Lillian has a new best friend in Helen (Rose Byrne), hyper-organised and always having the last word. Helen and Annie battle for control of the bachelorette party, bridal shower and choice of the bridesmaids’ dresses while trying to maintain their happy face. Annie competes with heart, Helen with money.
Of course, heart wins, but an awful lot of money is spent as well. Bridesmaids has its cake – or more accurately, its oversized love cookie – and eats it. In between, it has some pretty funny set pieces, from the over-extended “Congratulations on your engagement” speeches – Annie and Helen try to upstage one another – a try out for bridesmaids’ dresses affected by food poisoning and a trip to Las Vegas that is nothing like The Hangover, which for me is just as well, as I’m not a fan.
Annie negotiates her sex, employment and flat share problems (Little Britain’s Matt Lucas plays her insensitive flat mate, who moves his layabout sister in with them). Chris O’Dowd plays a cop forever telling Annie to get her rear light fixed, becoming in the process her potential saviour.The stand-out comic performance is given by Melissa McCarthy as Megan, the groom’s sister, whose theme for a bridal shower is Fight Club and who knows an Air Marshal when she sees one. (“Where do you keep your gun – up your ass? I can cut a hole in my pocket and hide my iPod up mine.”)
Scenes run beyond their expected length to convey the excruciating embarrassment of the characters. I didn’t begrudge the unashamed crudity of some of the humour, since it is balanced by plenty of non-crude stuff, in particular Annie’s attempt to get police assistance.
Incendies, adapted by Canadian writer-director Denis Villeneuve from a play by Wajdi Mouawad has perhaps the most powerful final revelation of any movie in the past 20 years. It relies on a horrific twist of fate, a coincidence of the most unlikely, yet in the world of the movie, most logical kind. Revelations of this sort can come across as gimmicky. I am no fan of the big twist ending. Suddenly, we start to think of every element of the film as a sleight of hand, forgetting that movies are about moral dilemmas and human truths. Twist-driven movies can trivialise human cruelty.
But there is nothing trivial about Incendies, a film in essence about the importance – indeed, sacred nature – of final words. It begins in Canada. Twin brother and sister, Simon (Maxim Gaudette) and Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) are presented with two letters penned by their late mother, Nawal (Lubna Azabal), by the notary (Rémy Giraud) for whom their mother worked. One is addressed to their father, the other to their brother. The twins are asked to find their relatives; neither of whom they knew existed. This involves their first journey to their homeland, an unnamed Middle Eastern country that has been interpreted by many reviewers as Mouawad’s native Lebanon. Simon resists, so Jeanne undertakes the journey on her own and discovers that her mother was a social pariah.
In flashbacks, we discover why. Nawal shamed her family by faling for, and becoming pregnant by, a Christian immigrant. Her brothers kill the man, arrange for her baby to be adopted and send her to live with her uncle in the south. Then civil war breaks out. Nawal heads north, to be re-united with her son. She witnesses Christian barbarity to Muslims – the murder of innocent women and children on a bus. Then she joins them in their struggle.
We are not drawn into details for good reason. Mouawad and Villeneuve want to demonstrate that, within the arena of armed struggle, both sides are interchangeable. Neither side makes choices based on rational argument. Violent actions are abstract.Suspenseful and compelling, the film is critical of journeys undertaken with the expectation of a worthwhile goal. The understanding gained by Jeanne and Simon does not make them better people. Nawal turns them into assassins of a sort, with truth as their weapon. You wonder whether she was right to do so. Yet Simon is so dismissive of her final wishes, he almost deserves to know the truth. You feel more sympathy for Jeanne, but as a mathematician she has taken refuge in abstraction.
If the film has a moral, it is that no one deserves to think of themselves as well-adjusted. The implication is that people who create and live by their own value system deserve to have the carpet pulled from underneath them. Mouawad and Villeneuve demonstrate this in a way that few viewers will forget.
