Toni Collette makes Muriel’s Wedding funny and painful without asking us to pity its heroine. P.J. Hogan’s comedy is blunt in places, but its understanding of loneliness makes the rough changes of tone worth forgiving.
P.J. Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding understands how a wedding can appeal to someone who has barely considered the marriage. For Muriel Heslop, played by Toni Collette, being chosen would settle a great many doubts about her worth. We recommend this funny, compassionate comedy despite its rough changes of tone, because Hogan takes care with someone who could easily have become a running joke. He lets her hopes look foolish without suggesting that she is wrong to want affection.
Collette makes Muriel’s wish to be admired understandable even when her fantasies are embarrassing. She gives the wedding-dress dreams an urgency that makes it hard to dismiss them as mere vanity. We were moved more than we expected: Collette makes Muriel seem so hungry to be wanted that the imagined wedding becomes painful to watch. The comedy survives because she also allows us to see how much Muriel expects a ceremony to fix.
Rachel Griffiths’s Rhonda Epinstalk gives Muriel somebody whose company might matter more than her approval. When the women share a flat, the film has room to consider what friendship offers someone so preoccupied with marriage. Griffiths brings a useful directness to scenes that might otherwise drown in sympathy, and the pair are convincing company. Their relationship gives the film something to attend to beyond the question of whether Muriel will get her wish.
Martin McGrath’s cinematography favours emphatic colour, while Paddy Reardon’s production design takes cheerful decoration towards the gaudy. That suits a heroine whose dreams have little room for understatement, though the visual exaggeration occasionally makes the people around her too easy to laugh at. Jill Bilcock’s editing is particularly lively in the wedding scenes, giving the ceremonial fuss a brisk comic rhythm. These scenes have a confidence that the film’s more serious passages do not always share.
Peter Best’s score helps with the changes of mood, though the ABBA songs do more to explain Muriel’s imagined escape from her hometown. The pop gives her fantasies a persuasive happiness; we can understand why she would prefer to spend time with it. Best’s music is less distinctive, but its supporting role makes sense when Muriel has such firm musical loyalties. Hogan treats her attachment to those songs with affection, never assuming that we should laugh at her taste.
The problem is Hogan’s insistence when the story becomes more painful. Some supporting characters have been drawn so broadly that the move into serious drama asks for an adjustment the writing has not fully prepared. At times, the script also explains what we should think about self-esteem after Collette has already made it clear. A little less emphasis would help, particularly when the performances are capable of making us uncomfortable without an accompanying lesson.
Within romantic comedy, it remains unusually willing to let its heroine be awkward and mistaken without making her unworthy of our attention. Hogan is interested in how other people’s contempt can get inside a person’s thinking, and Collette makes that damage recognisable. Her scenes with Griffiths give us good reason to stay through the less assured stretches. Choose it for their company, but do not expect the ABBA songs to guarantee a cheerful evening.
