Review: Richard’s Wedding (2012)
Cast: Onur Tukel, Jennifer Prediger, Randy Gambill
Director: Onur Tukel
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy
Official Trailer: Here
It’s not just in the casually comic conversations had whilst wandering the streets of New York that Richard’s Wedding, the new independent film written and directed by Onur Tukel, calls to mind Woody Allen. It’s in the flowing naturalism too, in the sense that these actors are not so different from their characters, and in the ways we learn so much about them both despite and because of their façade of humour. We join two of them, Tuna and Alex, as they meet to go to their friends’ wedding and immediately feel the reality of their relationship. He—played by Tukel himself—is a past-his-prime slacker boasting his sexual conquest of a Chinese girl almost half his age (don’t worry, he’s old enough for that not to be wrong), she—played by Jennifer Prediger—an old friend more mature in life but not without her own issues.
The natural repartee of the dynamic is at once evident; without once having to stoop to expository levels, Tukel’s dialogue gives us an encompassing impression of these people and their history. So much of this comes courtesy of the conversational comedy, almost every sentence spiked with sharp witticisms and jocular verbal jousts.
Richard’s Wedding spends its first twenty minutes solely in the company of these two characters as they wander unhurriedly toward the titular celebration. Tukel favours longer takes as he and Prediger make their way through the city, his camera capturing their slow gait from a distance and allowing their conversation the realist benefit of infrequent cuts. The natural repartee of the dynamic is at once evident; without once having to stoop to expository levels, Tukel’s dialogue gives us an encompassing impression of these people and their history. So much of this comes courtesy of the conversational comedy, almost every sentence spiked with sharp witticisms and jocular verbal jousts. It’s mumblecore without the self-involvement and pretensions, a simple human conversation had between believable friends, thriving on the simplicity of comfortable camaraderie.
Allen—with whom Tukel should expect to be compared a lot—managed in his better pictures to explore the psychoses and existential qualms of his characters by way of their sense of humour, the way they spoke, the minutiae of their movements. He was at his best when his conversations carried psychological undertones, rather than the overbearing directness of the likes of Interiors and Another Woman. Richard’s Wedding, in its second act, seems to lose its confidence. When Tuna and Alex eventually arrive at their destination—the new home of a wealthy friend—they join a wider circle of friends. It signals the end of their rich and layered conversation, the end of the witty ripostes, and sadly, the end of much of the movie’s charm. The second act, set entirely within this house, is a stark turnaround and a bitter disappointment, the engaging comedy replaced with a vacant yearning for deeper drama. Gone are the laughs, the light tone replaced by a misguided seriousness that renders the story achingly inert, at least for a time.
Randy Gambill steals the show in his role as a crack addict turned preacher, spouting hilarious lines with a dazzling rapidity. That’s not to take away from the hard work everyone else does, though; few of the performers don’t bring an interesting character to bear, each of the many relationships given the time to be defined.
Tukel’s staging of this elongated scene is a mistake. Yes, some comedy remains and it never becomes a bad film in any sense, but the dialogue is so stilted by openly philosophical musings and efforts at establishing conflicting moral standpoints that it’s stifling. Too sharp and too sudden a change from what went before, it hurts the flow of the film and our engagement with its characters. Even in doing so, though, we get a glimpse at the skill of these filmmakers, the way they then pull things back from the brink of cataclysm in a superb final third a shining testament to their skills. So witty, so well-written, so damn funny is the final act that it manages to eclipse even the first, the juggling of an extended ensemble masterfully handled with the addition of a character alluded to throughout the film. Randy Gambill steals the show in his role as a crack addict turned preacher, spouting hilarious lines with a dazzling rapidity. That’s not to take away from the hard work everyone else does, though; few of the performers don’t bring an interesting character to bear, each of the many relationships given the time to be defined.
Though it suffers for its ill-advised descent into communal philosophising and robs itself of the opportunity to be deemed great, Richard’s Wedding ends on a note so strong that it’s easy to forget its one major transgression. To be treated to a well-crafted and genuinely funny comedy set to the tune of characters rather than some high concept is a privilege that rarely comes around. Here we have real people welcoming us into their world, inviting us to watch what makes them tick and to examine the intricate details that dictate their friendships. The eponymous event is so steeped in unending hilarity that it easily overcomes the slight sense of striving to hammer home a message, the lines here so packed with great comic writing that it would require repeat viewings to truly digest them all. The film concludes as the first guest departs. It says a lot that we’re as keen to convince her to stay as her friends are.
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