Something to watch tonight: Monday 20 May

Second Hand Wedding (Murphy, 2008)

Today’s recom­mend­a­tion is espe­cially for loc­al read­ers, a charm­ing low-budget com­edy that was shot very close to where I now live.

It’s always a chal­lenge review­ing NZ – or espe­cially Wellington-made – mater­i­al. There’s hardly any­one involved with Second Hand Wedding that I hadn’t worked with in some capa­city pri­or but I would like to think my affec­tion for it is well earned.

I reviewed it back in May 2008 (along with the much less deserving Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher com­edy What Happens in Vegas):

Geraldine Brophy plays Jill Rose, Kapiti’s top gar­age sale expert. Every Saturday morn­ing you’ll find her (and best mate Muffy broadly played by Tina Regtien) trawl­ing the nick-nacks look­ing for bar­gains. Long-suffering hubby Brian (a lovely and under­stated per­form­ance by Patrick Wilson) puts up with all the new paraphernalia because he has his own col­lec­tion to main­tain: all the pieces of a Model T Ford that will one day become a com­plete car again.

Local mech­an­ic Stew (a per­form­ance by Ryan O’Kane that is, per­haps, lack­ing in detail) has pro­posed to the Rose’s daugh­ter Cheryl (Holly Shanahan) but, afraid of the bar­gain base­ment wed­ding she fears her moth­er will provide, she keeps it a secret. When the news breaks, poor Jill is dev­ast­ated but anoth­er tragedy forces the fam­ily (and the com­munity) to pull togeth­er once again. There’s lots to love about Second Hand Wedding: music by Plan 9 and some songs I wouldn’t mind own­ing; classy edit­ing par­tic­u­larly in the mont­ages; per­fect, witty pro­duc­tion design by Brad Mill; but the heart and soul of the film is Brophy’s beau­ti­ful and meas­ured per­form­ance. If she’s not at the front of the queue when the act­ing awards are handed out for this year I will be very sur­prised*. Indeed, in this reviewer’s opin­ion it may be one the five best New Zealand screen per­form­ances ever.

I want to make spe­cial men­tion of the late Patrick Wilson as Jill’s hus­band Brian. He was a pal and someone who is remembered very fondly by every­one who worked with him.

*Reader, I was cor­rect. Brophy and Shanahan won act­ing prizes that year and Mill and edit­or Michael Horton were also nom­in­ated for their craft.

Where to watch Second Hand Wedding

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision or NZ Film On Demand (the offi­cial NZ Film Commission rent­al site)

Rest of the world: Doesn’t appear to be avail­able any­where else, I’m afraid. It got some good reviews in Australia but doesn’t seem to have made it to any of their stream­ing ser­vices. You can watch a ten-minute extract at NZ On Screen.

Further listening

The top­ics in last Friday’s RNZ Nights chat with Emile Donovan will have been famil­i­ar to sub­scribers here: The Way, My Way, BlackBerry and Once.

During a busy week you have to expect a bit of recyc­ling. I’d like to offer more vari­ety but the cur­rent TV series we are watch­ing is being saved for an RNZ web­site fea­ture next Monday and pre­view­ing the forth­com­ing French Film Festival in Aotearoa has also taken up a big chunk of time (and will be pos­ted tomor­row to RNZ).

Still, at least the foot­ball sea­son is finally over …