WEDDING, A

As in his previous films, Altman places a diverse group of people within a closed situation and follows them with his camera as their lives develop, intertwine, and unravel. By choosing this format, the director achieves a highly realistic effect, almost as though the audience were listening in on private (and usually overlapping) conversations. This reality places A WEDDING precariously on the border between comedy and tragedy. Like “Nashville,” A WEDDING weaves vignettes involving over forty characters into a mordant satire of wealth, class, and the American family. Arnaz and Amy Stryker play the groom and pubescent bride with braces, whose families and guests appear and reappear to be laughed at. A senile priest, the bride's sexually promiscuous sister, a lesbian wedding coordinator, a mother addicted to heroin, and a dying family matriarch all contribute their own eccentricities to this bizarre collection of social tensions.