"Noah! Open this (bleeping) door!" Bang! Bang! Bang! "I just want to talk!" The sound of her fists against the door echo through the courtyard like small arms fire.
Cowering inside the motel room Noah (Ben Ratner) can only hope Zipporah (Frida Betrani) will go away if he remains absolutely still. No such luck. Peering through the drapes he watches in horror as she walks back from her car with a tire jack in one hand and fire in her eye.
Obviously this marriage is in trouble. It began so well, too, with Noah, a salesman for a waterproofing company and Zipporah, an aspiring (and, unfortunately for her, supremely untalented) country singer, gazing into each other's eyes while the rabbi pronounced them man and wife. A few months later the marriage has sprung more leaks than the condo they share in metro Vancouver.
Noah's buddies are heading for problems as well. Can Lit prof Peter (Tom Scholte) is cheating on his sedate librarian wife Leslie (Nancy Sivak) with provocative young student Laurel (Marya Delver). Struggling architect Shane (Vincent Gale) feels threatened because his newly graduated girlfriend, Sarah (Molly Parker), also an architect, has landed a job with a high profile firm.
Hip, literate and darkly funny, this 2001 entry is the third film from Vancouver writer/director Bruce Sweeney.
Sweeney uses the predicaments of his characters to show how relationships among today's affluent young urbanites can crumble under the stress and pressure of modern life, especially if they are not built on a strong foundation to begin with. Lack of communication, sexual betrayal, career envy, Sweeney dissects them all with savage wit and savvy insight. The director allows his cast ample freedom to explore and develop their roles and he is repaid with characters which behave as if they were modelled on real people rather than broadly drawn stereotypes. Parker and Gale won Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscars). However, the whole cast is worthy of merit with Betrani a force of nature as frustrated country singer Zipporah. (With her temperament perhaps she should have considered a career in heavy metal instead.)
This is one of those rare movies in which Vancouver gets a chance to play itself. The dialogue is peppered with local references (the Cambie St. bridge, the old Expo 86 site, provincial politics). What Woody Allen does for New York Sweeney does for Vancouver. Twenty years in B.C. have given the Sarnia, Ontario native a feel for the quirky vibe of West Coast life (The movie also resembles an Allen film in the depiction of its male characters as vain, indecisive wimps who bend like willows in the wind while trying to hold their own with strong, purposeful women.)
Last Wedding is full of randy humour and a decidedly unromantic view of sex. The scene in which Laurel and Peter discuss Canadian authors while engaged in a dispassionate sexual act is rumoured to be a favourite in certain academic circles.
Cowering inside the motel room Noah (Ben Ratner) can only hope Zipporah (Frida Betrani) will go away if he remains absolutely still. No such luck. Peering through the drapes he watches in horror as she walks back from her car with a tire jack in one hand and fire in her eye.
Obviously this marriage is in trouble. It began so well, too, with Noah, a salesman for a waterproofing company and Zipporah, an aspiring (and, unfortunately for her, supremely untalented) country singer, gazing into each other's eyes while the rabbi pronounced them man and wife. A few months later the marriage has sprung more leaks than the condo they share in metro Vancouver.
Noah's buddies are heading for problems as well. Can Lit prof Peter (Tom Scholte) is cheating on his sedate librarian wife Leslie (Nancy Sivak) with provocative young student Laurel (Marya Delver). Struggling architect Shane (Vincent Gale) feels threatened because his newly graduated girlfriend, Sarah (Molly Parker), also an architect, has landed a job with a high profile firm.
Hip, literate and darkly funny, this 2001 entry is the third film from Vancouver writer/director Bruce Sweeney.
Sweeney uses the predicaments of his characters to show how relationships among today's affluent young urbanites can crumble under the stress and pressure of modern life, especially if they are not built on a strong foundation to begin with. Lack of communication, sexual betrayal, career envy, Sweeney dissects them all with savage wit and savvy insight. The director allows his cast ample freedom to explore and develop their roles and he is repaid with characters which behave as if they were modelled on real people rather than broadly drawn stereotypes. Parker and Gale won Genie Awards (the Canadian Oscars). However, the whole cast is worthy of merit with Betrani a force of nature as frustrated country singer Zipporah. (With her temperament perhaps she should have considered a career in heavy metal instead.)
This is one of those rare movies in which Vancouver gets a chance to play itself. The dialogue is peppered with local references (the Cambie St. bridge, the old Expo 86 site, provincial politics). What Woody Allen does for New York Sweeney does for Vancouver. Twenty years in B.C. have given the Sarnia, Ontario native a feel for the quirky vibe of West Coast life (The movie also resembles an Allen film in the depiction of its male characters as vain, indecisive wimps who bend like willows in the wind while trying to hold their own with strong, purposeful women.)
Last Wedding is full of randy humour and a decidedly unromantic view of sex. The scene in which Laurel and Peter discuss Canadian authors while engaged in a dispassionate sexual act is rumoured to be a favourite in certain academic circles.