../four-weddings-and-a-funeral

Four Weddings and a Funeral

At a glance...

Ok you simply must believe me that inside of me is a white woman that is breaking things and screaming to be let out because she wants to fucking love these kinds of movies so much. She just adores these stupid movies about cishet monogamous relationships and wants to be a sap about true love and missionary sex all that shit. There's just one problem! I always end up despising how on-screen relationships end! I especially hate how movies like this have so many characters that are just dying to not be heterosexual and/or cisgender. And I hate how all these characters will have interesting chemistry and dynamics that just get sprayed with the industrial herbicide of monogamy which forces everything to come to the same, predictable end: death! Death of all the cool women, specifically! The contempt you end up accepting towards the random women who become accessory to the ordained-by-god pairing that is not even the best pairing in the film just drives me batty! Let some of them be gay so they can also have gay sex, every character in this friend circle has such cumstained energy there's no way in hell they wouldn't give it a go.

These writers need to nut up or shut up with these movies where every relationship is an example for why you should simply never get married. Why do Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell even like each other? Because they laughed while having sex? You should always be laughing while having sex. Why are we so fucking mean to all the other women in Charles's life? They are literally all so gorgeous and have so much more distinct character personality compared to Carrie, they do not deserved to be trash talked so much! Another thought: how the fuck are Charles and Scarlett besties and flatmates? You see that When Harry Met Sally, this is how men and women can be friends: by never existing on-screen at the same time for more than 30 seconds at a time but everyone just acts like they're friends. Show me why they are friends! They would be cute together as friends! Let me see that sweet platonic goodness! That one time Scarlett brings him tea is so sweet and begs the question, what does Charles do for her? Does he bring her food, does he bring her laundry to the dry cleaners, do they watch movies together? How the hell are they friends, and do they stop being friends when Charles and Carrie are not-married and having a baby together? What happened to Henrietta was sad and I'm glad the wedding was called off because that was even sadder, but then to just throw a polaroid on screen of her being married off to some other random bloke and be like, "everyone was happy again!" is such bullshit! She also deserves to learn that marriage is stupid! What other lesson could you possibly learn from being left at the altar by the most bumbling and unreliable man you know? She should be radicalized by the experience so she can start a relationship anarchist commune with poor pining Fiona. Or become a political lesbian, I dunno.

Ugh god why did they have to kill off Gareth, Simon Callow you are just the most delightful British man in every movie I have ever seen of yours, is that what you are like in real life? Please god tell me that is just you being yourself, no script or anything just purely vibing with your good posh energy. There were gay men in this movie! You had to sorta read between the lines because they never kissed or fucked or even faded to black in the bedroom while getting undressed like all these stupid random other couples do, but they existed and got to be confirmed without a doubt once one of them had fucking died. And It's played like this, "oh wow the 2 people we knew who actually had the best relationships AKA the ones who were legally excluded from marriage were the best couple" it's almost like you can have beautiful and heartbreaking relationships without marriage.

Like maybe you want to give this movie props for having the main couple not get married at the end, but when they are surrounded by relationships that look exactly the same but are all married, the audience gets the message that, ultimately, marriage is good. Marriage is good for people who want to be married, and people who don't get married are in good relationships as long as they basically look like married ones. It's not subversive, it's the definition of using the form to reinforce the dominant culture.

What is killing me about this movie is just like, how much I want to love it in spite of these things. Maybe it's because I never go to bars anymore so now I have to people-watch through movies where British people act like space aliens. Every time a cis woman in my life has talked to me about relationship things I have always said "just break up already" and I have been right so many more times than I have been wrong, that is to say I have never been wrong in my entire life! Now cis women don't talk to me about their relationships and maybe that's for the best. And maybe what I don't want to admit is that I was getting something out of being the gay trans bestie who they would ask for sage advice even though my only qualification was being so mentally ill I had been in therapy since before it was cool to make movies about therapy. Maybe I like being given an opportunity to judge hapless white cishet relationships. Maybe this is what I needed. Ah, fuck it, I'll give this one a like, like a sucker.

/1994/ /3 stars/ /the thrift store stack/