Review: A Simple Wedding
Before I watched this film, I was already confused. I saw a trailer for A Simple Wedding (which is due for cinematic release on 14th February this year) that was uploaded onto YouTube on 8th January, and I thought it was a very... interesting time to be releasing an Iranian-American romance film, to say the least. Then I Googled the film, and found that it was actually already released back in 2018. It is readily available online, including Amazon Prime, where the film is currently available to rent or buy at the time of writing. There, the year of release is claimed to be 2019. To give a disclaimer, I was going to postpone publishing this review until 14th February out of respect for the films release, but seeing as the film has already been released within the past couple of years (and already has reviews available online as a result) I thought I would go ahead and publish this now.
While I normally list the year of the film's release after the film title in my article header, I have no idea what year to attribute this film too. With that, let's begin, and hope I don't find the film as messy and confused as the release date.
A Simple Wedding follows Nousha Husseini, a young Iranian-American woman played by Tara Grammy. Her parents keep trying to set her up with single, successful Iranian men, but Nousha doesn't want to be forced into marriage, least of all with someone she doesn't love. When Nousha meets Alex Talbot (played by Christopher O'Shea), a white, bisexual artist, the pair are instantly drawn to each other and soon fall in love. However, when Nousha's parents learn of this relationship, they begin to prepare for the new couple to marry right away. Although Nousha and Alex love each other, is this marriage what they both want, only five months into their relationship?
A Simple Wedding seemed like the perfect film to examine at this time, with the current America-Iran conflict going on. The latest news at the time of writing this is that 34 American soldiers have traumatic brain injuries after Iran attacked America's military base in Iraq. This action is presumably retaliation from Iran to the US after President Trump's command to assassinate Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani a few weeks ago, on January 2nd.
Despite the confusion of when A Simple Wedding actually came out, and its Valentine's Day release being confirmed before the Iranian-American conflict, it still seems like a brave move to go ahead with the cinematic release at this time, when discussion of World War 3 happening because of these two countries is underway.
I have mixed feelings towards this film. It is a film without much plot, simply following two people from different cultural backgrounds meeting, falling in love and following them, as they are encouraged to enter an early marriage. I don't mind films without much plot, as long as the characters are strong enough on their own to make the audience want to keep watching. Unfortunately, that isn't the case with this film. The two leads in the central romance have really good chemistry together, and all of the characters are fine, but just a bit bland within their character archetypes. Nousha is the only one who escapes this trap to an extent.
When the film began, the first scene that unfolded before the opening credits depicted Nousha being rejected as a future wife by an Iranian man (and his mother). Leading up to this, we had seen Nousha smoking, guzzling red wine and singing a painfully awkward off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday" to her supposed future mother-in-law, while presenting her with a birthday cake and kissing her face. Nousha is then rejected by her fiance and in-laws, but simply pouts as she returns her engagement ring to them. It doesn't seem like she cares about it at all.
It was only when I reflected on the film afterwards that I realised Nousha was probably acting horribly on purpose so she wouldn't have to marry that man, as this behaviour shown here doesn't match her attitude in the rest of the film. Yet as an audience member introduced to her for in this way, it just makes her seem awkward and horrible. It isn't a good first impression, and I did not want to follow this character for an hour and a half of my time. Luckily this turns around, as Grammy proves herself to be a capable leading actress and is the standout element of this production. This is good for her, but somewhat problematic when we look at the other kinds of characters presented here.
This film has a cast of diverse characters: our protagonist is an Iranian-American woman, entering an interracial relationship white American bisexual man she met at a woman's rights protest. Nousha's best friends are a bisexual woman and a lesbian in a happy relationship together, and her boss is an African-American woman. The plot largely centres on Nousha's Iranian family. Alex's dad is in a relationship with another man, and later, we see Alex's mother enter a relationship with a man whose ethnicity is different to hers. It's great to see such a wide range of characters and relationships portrayed onscreen.
Yet beyond these diverse archetypes, these characters (Nousha aside) never feel like real people. In an attempt to be inclusive, we get a big cast of characters and no individuals to remember. Everyone's very nice, and seemingly middle class. That's about it.
While Alex is a very sweet character, he isn't particularly deep. You could argue that this was done to highlight how little he and Nousha know each other before their arranged wedding, but he just feels a bit underdeveloped to me. His identity seems to be bisexual, feminist artist. These things are all fine, but they aren't personality traits. Even with Alex's bisexuality, it is mentioned once and never addressed again. Surely it would have been interesting for Nousha's very traditional family to learn about and react to this information?
Additionally, while Christopher O'Shea is endearing in this role, he isn't given a lot to work with, so I can't exactly commend him for his acting skills. There's a scene near the end of the film where he had the potential to have a very dramatic moment with Nousha, but a subplot comes into focus instead, and Alex's participation in its revelation feels very flat.
I also felt that Nousha's family wanting Nousha and Alex to marry was oddly easy. I know being forced into a marriage, even with someone you love, isn't nice, but as someone who doesn't come from a religion where this is traditional, I was confused as to why this family were happy for Nousha to marry a white man when they had always pushed her to be with Iranian men before.
I really wish we had more development of Nousha's family: her mother and uncle probably get the most attention. We learn very little about her father (apart from him being very traditional, yet we never quite learn what that means to its full extent). Additionally, despite Nousha claiming her grandmother is her favourite person, we unfortunately spend almost no time with this character at all. She only has one key scene, which is when she is giving Nousha a speech about her own mother's arranged marriage, which starts off with devastating effect, but then the point becomes a bit muddled and begins to feel a bit contrived for the sake of making it relatable to Nousha. Considering the subject matter it started out with, I didn't like the turnaround of this speech, and the way it concluded because of it. What started off as something impactful ended up feeling a bit cheapened and far less memorable than it could have been.
As a white, English viewer, I don't feel like I learned anything much about Iranian traditions and beliefs. I really hoped I would, but instead I was left with more questions than I entered the film with. Why does this Iranian family fixate on arranging a marriage for their daughter anyway? We see the Qu'ran in one scene, but that's about it for religious motives. I wish this film would have aspired to educate its audience a bit.
The frustrating thing is, Alex, an outsider of different race to the main character and her family (who I suspect to be the race of most audience members viewing this film) is one of our main characters. Seeing the Iranian characters, such as his own girlfriend Nousha, communicate with him and discuss their traditions could have felt very natural and served as a great opportunity to educate audiences unfamiliar with Iranian and Muslim culture, without spoon feeding it to them. This felt like a greatly missed opportunity. Instead, we're presented with a scene where Nousha scolds Alex for doing something she finds offensively stereotypical towards Iran people.
The last half an hour of the film proposes an interesting change in events, brought on by a character's big decision. This leads to some good moments of character development for Nousha, and serves well to test the relationship between her and Alex. However, the way the situation is resolved feels very weak, and unsatisfying. Additionally, with the particular resolution the film went with, you can't help but wonder why the conflict wasn't solved about five minutes after it first occurred.
The film-making aspect is very average in terms of direction, score and cinematography. The costume design is also very simple, but I really liked that the characters would be shown wearing the same clothes again across different days throughout the film: usually we only see an item of clothing on a film character once, while this felt a bit more true to life.
The script isn't bad. There are some very promising lines of dialogue (see my Quote of the Film below), I just wish there had been a bit more development of the main characters. I think the subplots of the side characters like Nousha's colleagues and Alex's parents could have been cut down (characters like Alex's dad and boyfriend could have been cut out entirely) to have better developed the main family dynamic.
This film is fine, and that's part of my problem with it. With a topic like this, and with a colourful cast of characters, I don't want to see a film that's simply average. That means A Simple Wedding is forgettable, and with everything going on in our political world right now, it would have been really good and special if we had something a bit more memorable and brave coming to our screens - or already available in our Amazon Prime subscriptions. Perhaps I needed to manage my expectations a little with this one, but even if I had, I still don't think the sweet central romance between our two leads would have been enough to make this film any better to me.
THE SCOREBOARD
Chick Flick Check List Elements: 1, 5, 13, 14 (+1), 24, 31, 38, 39, 47, 51, 56, 57, 61, 62, 69 (half a point).
Total: 16.5
Is this really a chick flick or will men like it too? Despite it being more of a romantic comedy than a chick flick, I think this film would be better received by a predominantly female audience, due to the female lead and the central romance.
Would I recommend this film? Ultimately yes, but the lack of plot and a weak ending makes this recommendation somewhat cautious.
Quote of the film: "I grew up in Orange County, but my parents are from Iran. You know, the super peaceful country in the middle east, never in the news." - Nousha
Film rating: 4/10
