OCS – SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 7 AT 11:10 PM – FILM
Eleven years later Titanic (1997), British director Sam Mendes brought together Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio to marry them in an American suburb in 1955. The Rebel Wedding has in common with its illustrious predecessor only the fact of being the story of a shipwreck. The cruelty of the screenplay – adapted from a novel by Richard Yates (The Panoramic WindowRobert Laffont, 1961) – is sharpened by the romantic aura surrounding the star couple.
The term story is not quite accurate. Even if the scenario follows – with a few flashbacks – the chronology of this marriage, its almost theatrical division into symptomatic sequences rather brings it closer The Rebel Wedding of dissection.
The film begins with April meeting Frank Wheeler at a New York bohemian party. She is beautiful and wants to be an actress; he is handsome and doesn’t know what to do with his life. In the next sequence, they are found a few years later. She is on stage surrounded by amateurs, in front of an audience of neighbors and friends who force themselves to applaud. After the show, Frank tries to console April, before mocking her poor talents.
Warning signs
The Wheelers, refugees because she was pregnant in a small town in Connecticut, have promised themselves never to become like their neighbors. April’s failure reminds them of their promises, and the young woman, who now has two children, conceives the project of leaving for Paris, dreamed of as the city of all possibilities. The main part of the film takes place during the summer preceding the theoretical date of departure for France.
April’s seriousness and determination excite Frank, who has settled into a job well below what he considers to be his intellectual stature. The agitation of the two characters, who feel life closing in on them, has something derisory about it. However, Sam Mendes films them without irony, erasing the comedy traits. The outdoor scenes are bathed in summer light, the interiors are all the softer because the wounds inflicted there are bloody. The pace is calm, the paroxysms only occur once all the warning signs have been listed.
The forensic precision that the director is fond of carries with it the risk of coldness and disengagement. The Rebel Wedding protects itself from this danger thanks to its actors. A little bit overweight, DiCaprio does nothing to save an indefensible character. Kate Winslet does not, however, make April a martyr on the altar of patriarchy. By the end credits, nothing remains of the memory of the lovers of Titaniconly a taste of ashes. Perhaps this is the real reason for this film.
The Rebel Weddingfilm by Sam Mendes (EU, 2008, 125 min). With Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon. On MyCanal until December 31.
