‘My Mother’s Wedding’ Rises Above the Seasonal Sludge

A competently conceived, professionally made movie about real people that holds your interest and makes you think about something besides vampires, zombies and idiot jokes is as hard to find in the middle of summer as free ice cream. A friendly, heartfelt little movie called My Mother’s Wedding is a pleasant exception. It’s about three sisters who reluctantly return to their childhood home in the British countryside to be bridesmaids in their widowed mother’s third wedding. The sisters, with their own problems and agendas, are Georgina (Emily Beecham), the youngest and a hard-working hospital nurse; Victoria (gorgeous Sienna Miller), who has made quite a name for herself as an actress in America; and Katherine (Scarlett Johansson), the eldest, who played a strong role in the upbringing of her two sisters, who resent her for it. Their mother is glamorous Diana, played by still-beautiful Kristin Scott Thomas, who is continually baffled by her assorted children, grandchildren and female family friends, not to mention their various fathers and lovers, all of whom have disappointed her in different ways through the years. (Ms. Thomas is also the film’s director, and co-wrote the screenplay with John Micklethwait.) 

That’s a lot of characters to get used to, but the performances are so clearly delineated they become familiar fast. (Nice, by the way, to see Ms. Thomas in a contemporary role with a modern hairstyle and hip, recognizable boutique clothes. She’s so much prettier than in the period costumes in the formal roles she usually plays.)

At the garden party dinner following the ceremony, everyone seems compatible, but the tensions don’t take long to surface. Two of the sisters have children who are deeply disturbed and unable to cope. Scarlett Johansson’s Katherine, it turns out, is a lesbian whose girlfriend confesses she’s pregnant and wants her lover to give their unborn child her family name. This puts the decorated military hero in a stressed-out dilemma because her ultimatum comes on the day Katherine is named and celebrated as the first woman to command a ship in the Royal British Navy and the entire family is arriving to watch her do it.

As much as I enjoyed the film, I found it missing a beat. (Several beats, in fact.) The actors are all very good, but I didn’t always find the narrative credulous, and when the mother finally reduces her daughters to shock by summing up all of their faults in one final analysis by announcing “Let go of the children you were and pay attention to the children you have” I groaned at the one-sentence burst of sudden wisdom. Still, considering the rest of the summer’s flotsam, My Mother’s Wedding is hardly a waste of time. In an otherwise grim summer, it goes well with air-conditioning.