>>REVIEW
CONFETTI
STARRING Stephen Mangan, Meredith MacNeill, Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins
DIRECTED BY Debbie Issit
Opens Friday, October 6
Check listings
Take three completely different couples, toss in a couple of campy wedding planners and a slick magazine publisher, bake at 350 degrees and presto – you have the recipe for a deliciously witty satire.
Lampooning one of the most lucrative and heavily advertised institutions around is no easy feat, but writer and director Debbie Issit has managed to create a film that is clever, touching, and above all, hilarious.
Confetti magazine is the Vogue of British wedding magazines and its publisher, Antoni Clarke (Jimmy Carr), has a lust for exploiting wedding ceremonies. Creating a competition pitting a frighteningly competitive tennis duo, a blissfully naked couple of naturists and a lovesick pair of Hollywood musical buffs against one another for the chance to create the most unique wedding and win a "dream home" seems ludicrous, and that's the point. The resulting frenzied preparations are entirely unscripted and soda-through-the-nose funny.
Watching each couple struggle to maintain the love that brought them to this point makes for lively viewing and they all have their quirks and foibles. By far, the most unscrupulous and easy to loathe couple, Josef and Isabelle (Stephen Mangan, and Meredith MacNeill), are so desperate to win it's almost embarrassing to witness. The nudist, or "naturalist" couple Michael and Joanna (Robert Webb and Olivia Colman) are just painfully wholesome and dimpled in all their naked glory.
Matt and Samantha (Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson) are obsessed with old-school Hollywood musicals and unable to carry a tune. They are also hopelessly in love with each other and the most winsome of the three pairs.
The wedding planners Heron and Hough (Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins) are spectacular as professional purveyors of good taste and staged romance and proudly boast that every wedding they've planned has resulted in endless wedded bliss.
Despite the razor-sharp comedic barbs aimed at the thriving wedding industry, there are moments of astonishing intimacy and tenderness, that keeps Confetti from being plain old nasty. The movie will no doubt join the ranks of classic mockumentaries such as Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman and take its rightful place as a brilliant satire that will stand the test of time. |
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