Reviewed by Mike Crowl
Muriel's Wedding has been hailed as Australia's latest comedy success. In fact, it's much closer to a mediaeval morality play. There are moments of comedy, and the tone remains light even in the face of tragedy, but the underlying themes of this piece are: "we sow what we reap," and "lying doesn't pay."
In this film the secular worlds of Porpoise Spit and Sydney are nothing more than surface, mere glosses on a moral foundation that rises up again and again to haunt characters trying to live without it. A pleasure island is demolished by a hurricane; the self-pronounced "wicked" character ends up in a wheelchair; marriages crash through deceit, and one of the more sympathetic characters commits suicide.
Yet Muriel's Wedding is not a dismal or dour piece. It has all the exuberance and life of Strictly Ballroom, but in this film the characters have a lot more to learn than a new dance form. Muriel (Toni Collette) is one of a group of young women whose only ambition is to get married. This doesn't have anything to do with a relationship, or commitment. The groom is irrelevant; the wedding day and its trimmings are the be-all and end-all.
Unfortunately, Muriel comes from a dysfunctional family, with a politically-minded father (Bill Hunter) who bribes and cheats his way through life, failing to see how he's destroying his family in the process. Closeted in her bedroom with Abba tapes blaring, Muriel has no self-esteem, and little hope of having a boy-friend, let alone a wedding.
In a moment of madness, she uses a blank cheque to change her life, ending up in Sydney with Rhonda (played with verve by Rachel Griffiths). Muriel finally achieves her wedding, but at considerable cost to her integrity, and to her friendship with Rhonda. In the last scene they set out afresh from stifling Porpoise Spit to start living, without lies, in Sydney. This is P. J. Hogan's first feature film - he's not to be confused with Paul Hogan of Crocodile Dundee fame - yet as writer and director he never puts a foot wrong. He's well served by a near perfect cast, which includes some established actors and many newcomers.
The film has some sexually explicit language, and a couple of scenes that leave little to the imagination. It must be admitted in the second of these, however, that the focus is on the absurdities of two bodies in close proximity. Moreover, this film doesn't take the peeping tom approach to sex typical of films like the near-pornographic Disclosure. Given the point of what's being said and seen, Muriel's Wedding keeps a tight rein on sexual matters.
There's no obvious religion in this film - even though the Heslop household has a Catholic picture or two, and priests officiate at weddings and funerals. All the same, this is a film with spiritual depth. God chooses many different ways of speaking, and He isn't averse to using secular vehicles to point a spiritual truth. Muriel's Wedding says more about the state of our souls in a materialistic society, and the idolatry of Romance, than many a didactic novel or homily. Bear with the crudities, if you can, and see Muriel's Wedding for its zest and for the lessons it teaches.
copyright 1997 Mike Crowl
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