VOD film review: The Wedding Guest (2019)
Review Overview
Cast
8Intrigue
7Pace
5David Farnor | On 22, Jul 2019
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Dev Patel, Radhika Apte, Jim Sarbh
Certificate: 15
Watch The Wedding Guest online in the UK: Amazon Priem / Curzon Home Cinema / Apple TV (iTunes) / Prime Video (Buy/Rent) / TalkTalk TV / Rakuten TV / Google Play / Sky Store
When you see the name “Michael Winterbottom” these days, you might well expect to be whisked abroad for a pleasant travelogue with Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan. The Wedding Guest is very much not that. Here, we follow Dev Patel’s Asif, a young man heading to Pakistan for someone’s nuptials. He’s just like any wedding guest: he hires a car, he has four passports, he’s packing two guns and, well, things only get more unexpected from there.
It’s not until a third of the way through this slender thriller that we learn the real purpose of Asif’s visit, one that involves soon-to-be-bride Samira (Radhika Apte), who would rather be with her lover Deepesh (Jim Sarbh) than her arranged groom. What ensues is an increasingly thorny partnership that takes in everything from secret riches and border controls, not to mention those aforementioned firearms, fake passports, and more.
Dev Patel is wonderful in the lead, sinking his teeth into the chance to play a character with shadowy depths and Apte is an equally compelling foil, also hiding her own motivations as Asif begins to let his guard down. But the more we dive into the evolving bond between the duo, the more Winterbottom takes his foot off the pedal, and the gripping first half begins to lose momentum. Nonetheless, the road trip is constantly rooted in convincing, natural locations, the kind that have often marked the chameleonic Winterbottom’s documentary-like work out from the crowd. Against that backdrop, the two stars are intriguingly guarded, and, while the ending never accelerates to a gear akin to You Were Never Really Here, that mutual caution, and their loaded determination to subvert the cultural (and cinematic) traditions imposed upon them, makes for entertaining, low-key viewing.
The Wedding Guest is available to watch online on Amazon Prime Video as part of a Prime membership or a £5.99 monthly subscription.