Romantic Film Review - Four Weddings and A Funeral

It is a really clever film that has the person who speaks up for forever hold their peace at the crucial moment in a wedding be a deaf person. that is when you know you are in the presence of something very special. 

Richard Curtis, as I looked at a few days ago in the About Time review, has made lots of brilliant romance films, but arguably his very best is Four Weddings and a Funeral - which is twenty years old today. When you watch it again, it becomes clear that it is a film about gay marriage, and about the silences that keep us from being happy or on the right path in life; you know that path that your intuition is telling you is the right one to pursue. The only time we see real, passionate, long term love in Four Weddings and a Funeral, is at the funeral, when the oh-so-gorgeous John Hannah recites Dunn's Stop the Clocks - I defy you to not cry in that scene, it makes me bawl my eyes out every single time. 

But Four Weddings and a Funeral is like that. It pulses with clever little bubbles that sit very close to the surface, but never undermine the romantic film genre. To my knowledge, Four Weddings and a Funeral was one of the first rom-com's to have a male protagonist, something that Richard Curtis would repeat through out his film making, and something Hugh Grant has made a film career out of. That its central happily married couple is gay, it includes a deaf man who isn't just hot but also whose deafness is unnecessary to the plot (in other words, he's like all deaf people, he's a person not an anecdote) and it includes a woman who sleeps with a lot of men and doesn't want to get married it quite shocking. It is a subversive film even for today, and in the end it's part of what makes Four Weddings and A Funeral such an enduring success. 

Richard Curtis didn't just direct Four Weddings and a Funeral, he also wrote it. To give it some context, the Tom Hanks film Philadelphia came out just a few months later, and we all remember how we got on the bandwagon for that film, loving the way it challenged stilted thinking around the aids crises. Well Four Weddings and a Funeral was challenging ideas around gay marriage, something the world hasn't quite come to terms with even twenty years later. Too many gay men were dying in the early nineties, but it wasn't from heart attacks on the whole it was something else. When you think about how happy the world was to watch people with HIV/Aids die away, it really isn't a big surprise the world is struggling to accept their marriages just twenty years later, but it is a rather damning critique on the way hetro people keep deciding how these people should be in love. 

Romantic Film Review - Ghost

It is one of the most romantic films ever, one we all love, or love to hate. Personally, being a bit of a Demi Moore fan, I love to love Ghost, and still manage to make my way back to it fairly regularly - my favorite things about Ghost is Demi, even if what she mostly does is her famous one tear cry. I think it is her most gentle film, and although I love her for her 'tough girl' attitude, she really proves in Ghost that she has the chops to pull the classic female lead out of the bag when the need arises.

For the three people out there who haven't seen Ghost, here is the premise:

Sam Wheat (Partick Swayze) a banker and Molly Jensen (Demi Moore) an artist, are a loving couple who have decided to take the plunge and move in together. True to classic late 80's Hollywood style, they can afford an enormous refurbished converted warehouse, that still looks amazing in a viewing today. 

The couple are obviously deeply in love, however despite this, Sam still has trouble telling the gorgeous Molly that he loves her. 

 At work, Sam discovers a major discrepancy in multiple bank accounts and confides in his good friend and colleague Carl Bruner (Tony Goldwyn). Carl offers to investigate the matter, but Sam decides to investigate himself. Later that night, Sam and Molly are attacked by armed thug Willie Lopez (Rick Aviles) and Sam is killed by a gunshot during a struggle with Willie. Sam's ghost arises from his dead body, which lies next to the distraught Molly. He gradually realizes that he is a ghost whose presence cannot be seen or heard.

It doesn't take Sam long to work out that his death wasn't an accident and that he was in fact murdered. As he starts to place all the pieces next to each other, he realizes that Molly is still being followed by the people who killed him. In order to try to get some crucial information to her, he befriends a spiritual medium, Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg), who is really a cheat to speak to Molly on his behalf, as she is the only one who can hear him. Now that Oda Mae can hear Sam, she is perpetually haunted by many ghosts trying to get messages back to their loved ones, inadvertently making her a genuine spiritual medium. 

That's enough there - I don't want to spoil the rest of it for (as I said above) the three people in the world who haven't seen Ghost. It is enough to say that the interactions between Woopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze are very funny, and they bring a comic element to the film that is needed to lift it from the rather depressing premise. Because we know Sam is dead, we know he will have to leave Molly eventually. 

If you're looking for something fun to do on date night, or you need a nostalgic weepy to help you get over a breakup, Ghost is your film. In terms of film making, It's not a terrible brilliant film, but it is a great love story, and you will be in the mood to connect with your lover when it's over.