JENNY’S WEDDING
DIRECTOR: Mary Agnes Donoghue
CAST: Katherine Heigl, Alexis Bledel, Tom Wilkinson, Linda Emond, Grace Gummer, Matthew Metzger
CLASSIFICATION: 10-12 PG
RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes
RATING: **
There’s a fine, fierce film somewhere in Jenny’s Wedding, trying to claw its way out from under all the clichés and speechifying.
Writer-director Mary Agnes Donoghue doesn’t make it easy: the movie, about a 30-ish lesbian whose coming-out rattles her traditional parents, teases us with moments of humour, truth and emotion only to devolve, again and again, into Hallmark-style dramedy. The result is watchably messy and well-meaning, with a handful of scenes and performances worth savouring and a distinct whiff of squandered opportunity.
Jenny’s Wedding might get a box-office bump from the topicality of its subject and the presence of love-to-hate-her star, Katherine Heigl.
The <&eh>role of Jenny Farrell, a closeted yuppie secretly living with her girlfriend, Kitty (Bledel), is the most interesting Heigl has had in a while, and she invests it with an appealing mix of sensitivity and prickliness.
The opening scenes find Jenny at a family gathering, where dad Eddie (Wilkinson), mom Rose (Emond), sister Anne (Gummer) and brother Michael (Metzger) – all under the impression that Jenny is straight and Kitty is her room mate – badger her about her love life.
Given how fast and far the needle has moved on LGBT issues in the past few years, the Farrells’ cluelessness and Jenny’s extreme trepidation feel slightly off-key – as does the reaction of her loving, middle-class parents when Jenny tells them the truth (“What did we do wrong?”). Such retrograde attitudes would have made more sense had Jenny’s Wedding identified these folks as Bible thumpers or staunch conservatives; as written here, Eddie and Rose’s bigotry just registers as if they’ve been living in a cave.
Despite the sketchiness of that narrative context, the scene in which Jenny tells her mother that she’s gay and plans to marry Kitty is played with wit and authentic-feeling anxiety. Less persuasive is a conversation between Jenny and her father: “We’re ordinary people, not rebels!” Eddie protests when she voices her desire for a big wedding with the family present. Unfortunately, such on-the-nose dialogue is typical of the film, which often telegraphs its apt observations – in this case, the way parents sometimes prioritise their image over their children’s well-being – with the delicacy of a bludgeon.
Luckily, Donoghue’s first-rate cast does its highly skilled darndest to turn even the most ham-handed of the film’s heart-to-hearts and spats into something resembling real life. Aside from Heigl, convincing as a stubborn, principled woman more like her parents than she’d care to acknowledge, Wilkinson and Emond are especially good, inhabiting their roles with unfussy gravitas. Rose is the film’s richest character – a kind but conventional person forced to broaden her worldview – and Emond plays her with a bracing nervous energy.
<&eh>“Coming out” films tend to focus on the character coming out; if there’s a spark of novelty in Jenny’s Wedding, it’s that it is less about a daughter’s revelation than it is about a mother and father fumbling their response to it. Indeed, the most poignant scenes find Rose and Eddie huddled in bed, fretting over their children’s lives and, particularly, their own parenting skills.
Yet Jenny’s Wedding can’t sugarcoat the raw, often bitter feelings coursing through its story – a testament not just to the sincerity of the actors, but also the timeliness of its themes. The climactic titular sequence may even wring a tear or two; once you dry your eyes and come to your senses, you’ll just wish they were wrung more honestly. – The Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Aloha or Trainwreck, you will like this.