FILM REVIEW
MY MOTHER’S WEDDING
Rated R
95 Minutes
Released August 8th
Actress Kristin Scott Thomas began working on this highly personal project about 6 years ago. The movie begins in the style of an old-fashioned 1940’s feel-good movie about a family with broken relationships but decidedly modern predicaments, and later the pace quickens to reveal the depth of the characters and revelations one after the other that have shaped their lives. Three sisters with decidedly different personalities arrive back at their mother’s house in the English countryside for their mother’s third marriage.
This peaceful English countryside, played beautifully by the county of Hampshire, is the pastoral backdrop, a contrast to the frayed nerves and self-doubt pervading the characters. Personalities and events are revealed in hints through their actions and not spelled out in the narrative. The camera work by Yves Belanger is intuitive, bringing out the emotional heart of each scene, each relationship. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2023, but it wasn’t released until August 8th of this year.
This is a personal project for Scott Thomas. In her family, she was the oldest of five children who had different fathers. Her own father was a pilot with the Royal Navy who was killed in an air accident when she was five. As a teen, she had realized that her younger brothers had no memory of their father, and that she carried that reminiscence for them, so she would make animated pencil drawings about their dad into a video for them. A variation of these animated sketches has become a haunting part of this film.
Scott Thomas was born in Cornwall in England and grew up in Dorset, near to where this film was shot. When she was 19, she left to be an “au pair” (nanny) in Paris and never looked back. She has spent a good part of her life in France and speaks the language fluently. She is known for her critically acclaimed performances in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and The English Patient (1996).
This is her first project as a writer and director. Her longtime partner, now husband, John Mickelthwait helped write the script. His expertise was in moving the plot forward and she wrote the dialogue and character interaction. Mickelthwait is a financier who was editor-in-chief of The Economist from 2006-2015 and is now editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News since 2015. He had never written a screenplay before.
The three actresses playing the sisters were carefully chosen by Scott Thomas. She had a history with Scarlett Johanssen, as they played mother and daughter in 1998 in Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer, when Johanssen was just 13, and again in The Other Boleyn Girl in 2008. Scott Thomas sent Johanssen the script for My Mother’s Wedding in hopes that the actress would accept the role of “Katherine” and was thrilled when she did.
In this movie Johanssen brings her own power to a role that encompasses courage and independence, similar to her character in Jurassic World: Rebirth, which was shot later. Sienna Miller who plays “Victoria,” is memorable as Bradley Cooper’s wife in American Sniper (2014). She has been a successful model and played “Sally Bowles” in Cabaret on Broadway. Emily Beecham, an accomplished, award-winning actress, plays “Georgina,” the sister who had become a mom and housewife. Beecham has worked steadily in film and TV since 2006 and received the Best Actress award for her work in Little Joe at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
My Mother’s Wedding was obviously a labor of love for Scott Thomas as its writer, director and star. The story uncovers ways that we add our own twist to our version of other people’s lives and histories, how we believe we know others, but we never see with their eyes. What we do take with us is the effect they have on us. Here Scott Thomas’s use of the pencil-drawn animation to represent dream/memory sequences works perfectly, so much better than the often jarring or confusing dream sequences used in other movies. In the credits at the end of the film you will discover why this was such a momentous project for Scott Thomas.
Kathryn Whitney Boole has spent most of her life in the entertainment industry, which has been the backdrop for remarkable adventures with extraordinary people. She is a Talent Manager with Studio Talent Group in Santa Monica. kboole@gmail.com
