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Love and marriage: movie weddings will never be the same after these gay directors crash the party

Advocate, The, March 25, 2008 by Kyle Buchanan

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

KISS THE BRIDE

DIRECTED BY C. Jay Cox

STARRING Tori Spelling, James O'Shea, and Philipp Karner

REGENT RELEASING

MARRIED LIFE

DIRECTED BY Ira Sachs

STARRING Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams, and Pierce Brosnan

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

AT A TIME WHEN MANY AMERICANS seem to be reconciling themselves to the idea of gay marriage, there's still one small group that needs some convincing--and it's made up of other gay people. Why, they argue, should we embrace an institution that straight people have made such a shambles off It's a line of thinking that conveniently sidesteps ideas like equal rights and choice, but it points to an irony that can't be ignored: Gay people are fighting for the right to get married at a time when straight people are divorcing in droves.

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It's into that charged cultural moment that Kiss the Bride throws its bouquet. The film's hero, Matt (Philipp Karner), is busy putting together a gay marriage issue for the magazine he works for, but there's no chance he'll be saying his own vows anytime soon. Matt is still too hung up on the one that got away: Ryan (James O'Shea), the best friend from high school with whom he had a secret affair. When Matt learns that Ryan is getting married--to a woman (Tori Spelling), no less--he makes a beeline for his hometown, determined to put a stop to what he's sure will be a sham wedding. What he finds when he gets there, however, is that Ryan and his bride truly seem to be in love. Will Matt divulge Ryan's sordid past and put a stop to the wedding? A pressing question, to be sure, but here's one to trump it: Can you believe a camp icon like Tori Spelling playing a character with no gaydar?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Spelling is fine (if underused), and Ty Lieberman's snappy script clearly aspires to door-slamming farce, but in his follow-up to Latter Days, director C. Jay Cox shoots things so indifferently that all the air gets let out of the balloon. A comedy like this needs a quick pace and a tight editing style, but Bride dithers too long on slow-paced scenes about the families of the bride and groom. What we really want to see more of is the tentative truce between Matt and Spelling's Alex, the woman he thought would be his rival. When, late in the game, he gives her a very charged kiss, it's an interesting moment. Is Matt acting on his own bisexuality--a concept he had previously dismissed? Or is he simply possessive, attempting to seduce Alex after her fiance refuses him? For a gay romantic comedy, these are compelling questions to ask--too bad Kiss the Bride is afraid of commitment.

The couples at the heart of queer director Ira Sachs's Married Life aren't afraid to take the plunge, but they're terrified of what comes next. Harry (Chris Cooper) has fallen out of love with his wife, Pat (Patricia Clarkson), but he's afraid to divorce her, even though he's taken on a new, younger mistress (Rachel McAdams). Instead of telling Pat the truth--something Harry is sure will devastate her--he decides that he's simply got to kill Pat off so she'll never know the suffering. What fretful Harry doesn't realize, though, is that Pat is having an affair of her own, and that she also has kept it quiet out of concern for her spouse. The only person who knows about both affairs is Harry's friend Richard (Pierce Brosnan), but instead of setting these crazy kids straight, Richard feeds into their paranoia. He wants to seduce McAdams's Kay for himself, so the longer he can keep Pat and Harry in each other's orbit, the more time he'll have to act.

Though these self-obsessed creatures sound like they've come straight out of a Nell LaBute film, Sachs (The Delta) sets the action in the late 1940s and moves things at a genteel pace. "We can't build our happiness on the happiness of someone else," says Richard, repeatedly--but it's exactly what each character tries to do, not only with whom they hurt but with whom they love. Harry's murder plan is as mild as Married Life itself, and his ineffectual plans to carry it out arouse no more than half-smiles, but the comedy isn't as dark as the film's essential concept: that Pat and Harry have already suffocated themselves in marriage. They pledged to each other "till death do us part," but who knew it could be taken so literally?

Love and marriage: movie weddings will never be the same after these gay directors crash the party

Advocate, The, March 25, 2008 by Kyle Buchanan

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