An insufferable, implausible and treacly romantic-drama, with Michelle Williams running an orphanage in
India and Julianne Moore as her benefactor
This entirely insufferable film is a sugary
Hollywood remake of the 2006 Danish drama After the Wedding, which was directed by Susanne Bier and starred Mads Mikkelsen as a troubled aid worker running a cash-strapped charity in Mumbai, summoned back to Copenhagen for what seems like a miraculous meeting with a rich benefactor. The film switches genders, which makes a central plot point much less plausible, and it has no idea about what facial expression the now female lead is supposed to have. The mystery has been dialled down, the treacle dialled up, and what we are left with is basically Eat Pray Love 2.
Michelle Williams plays Isabel, an
American who runs an orphanage in India. She bears a constant expression of sorrowing concern, injured sensitivity and pained disapproval of other people’s ethical compromises which at all times gives her, to quote the Yorkshire expression, a face like a smacked arse. It gets even worse when she is offered millions of dollars by a wealthy American corporation, and is forced to travel to
New York and stay in a fancy hotel at the corporation’s expense to discuss the details.