Screen Queens: Julia and Rupert

MattCanada here with another week of gay cinema. This week's film is My Best Friend's Wedding, one of the most criminally underrated films of all time and, in my opinion, the best comedy of the nineties.


From afar the film's gay credentials seem to amount to just another example of the romantic comedy's stereotypical use of the gay best friend character. However, George (Rupert Everett in a career best performance) is the film's voice-of reason, moral centre, and ultimately the film's unconventional leading man.

The friendship between George and Julianne (Julia Roberts) highlights the special and unique relationship gay men and women can have. In gay film critic (and personal hero) Robin Wood's words

George's maturity, considerateness, and tact are intimately connected to the gayness that sets him apart from social norms, permitting him a wise distance from the practices and conventions in which those around him are entangled

Throughout the film Julianne has two defining men in her life, the mostly absent Michael (Dermot Mulroney) who is her past and George "her best friend these days" who is her present and her future. The final sequence has George surprising Julianne at the titular wedding. She has given up Michael, said goodbye to him for good.

The ending, however, is not sad, very much the opposite. As Julianne and the camera search out George in the crowd of people, the tone shifts from one of melancholy to happiness. The crowd parts, and there is George, as debonair as any leading man, and Julianne every bit the beautiful and independent leading lady. Julianne and George's dance reunion is constructed like any classic happy ending, the only difference being the Happy Couple is not the heterosexual couple but best friends, one gay and one straight.

George's final line...

Maybe there won't be marriage.
Maybe there won't be sex...
But by god there will be dancing.

...is transgressive in its acceptance and extollation of a non-normative union (for mainstream Hollywood, at least). The couple dance off happily, as the singer sings "forever and ever". Here the gay man is not relegated to homosexual pet status, he is the leading man, the moral centre of the film, and ultimately its hero. The relationship between Julianne and George is one of equals, and the film celebrates that at its conclusion.

The relationship between George and Julianne is only one of the many loveable aspects of My Best Friend's Wedding. Julia, Rupert, Dermot and Cameron Diaz all give performances that could be considered either their best work or on par with it. The script is hilarious and its set pieces are endlessly re-watchable. The Karaoke Scene where Julianne forces a reticent and stage shy Kimberly (Diaz) onstage to humiliate her, only to have it backfire and endear her to Michael and the whole room is poetic justice at its finest. Another exemplary comedic sequence is the cat fight in the washroom where Kimberly finally lets Julianne have it. Though indisputably the best moment is the now iconic "I Say A Little Prayer for You" wedding party sing-a-long led by George and the two slutty Southern cousins (this song also accompanies Julianne and George's dance at film's end). Movie moments which deliver pure and perfect pleasure are few and far between, and this is one of them. From the harmonizing, to Julianne's embarrassment, and the ensemble acting work, everything comes together flawlessly for a few minutes of cinematic joy.

Finally, isn't it amazing that a romantic comedy has at its center a character who is flawed and who makes mistakes but is not defined by them? Julianne is complex and Julia Robert confidently makes her both likable and enraging. If it was up to me the film, screenplay, Julia, Cameron, and Rupert all would have been nominated for Oscars that year.

Am I in the minority for finding My Best Friend's Wedding completely brilliant and under appreciated? Are there any other romantic comedies which people think were overlooked because of their connection to the most critically reviled genre?