Rhys Marc Jones | Father of the Bride / 2020

the wedding from hell

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rhys Marc Jones (screenwriter and director) Father of the Bride / 2020 [15 minutes]

 

British director Rhys Mac Jones’ Father of a Bride takes us to a wedding in hell. Young Christian, bother of groom, Christian (Jay Lycurgo) is nervously rehearsing the comments he been asked to make about his brother at the wedding in the hotel bathroom, when who should enter the bathroom but the father of the bride, Martin (Dominic Mafham), who not only stands next to him at the urinal joking, before he quickly exposes himself, forces him to re-tie his tie, and soon after attempts to grope and engage in sex with the young man.

      It all seems a joke to Martin—suggesting something to effect, “it’s all in family, what does it matter if it’s inside you”—as the two escape back into the wedding celebration, Martin standing up first to toast his slightly punk daughter, whom he glibly describes as his and his obviously distant wife’s greatest achievement.

      By the time Christian is asked to speak he is so absolutely terrified and disgusted that he cannot even fully deliver the speech he has been practicing and ends up vomiting in public. Obviously can’t openly say anything, as he attempts to escape the ceremony, but his best friend or girlfriend Fran certainly is ready to confront him about his failure.

      He can say nothing, and finally does leave the premises, breaking in the windows of Martin’s car as he runs off.

      Martin and friends, hearing the car alarm, rush to see what’s happened, but Martin, despite the total damage of windows, merely discovers another bottle of champagne within and encourages his friends to return and further celebrate.

      This is a truly a terrifying version of the old (and newer) Father of the Bride films, the first with Spencer Tracy (1950) and the revision with Steve Martin (1991). But those films were about the almost total dismissal of the father given the whirlwind surrounding the wedding, while this seems to put the sexually confused and perhaps drunken father fully into the center of the piece.

      Yet, it can’t be as terrifying as Robert Altman’s vision of wedding presented in his 1978 satire The Wedding. I think weddings tend to bring out the worst of everybody, despite the tears and joy. Parents lose their children, children begin a long journey into a totally new world which often, given the statistic doesn’t end up well. Everyone gets drunk. Even, as in Craig Lucas’ Prelude to a Kiss, a kiss from an old man can transform your young lover to someone you no longer can even recognize. And what about all the so-called “bachelor parties” where suddenly men fall into each other’s arms and bed.

      None of the commentators I have read knew what the short work was really trying to say, other presenting an incident of sexual assault by a major figure at a totally inappropriate moment. Surely, the younger brother can never reveal to his brother what a monster his new father-in-law really is, and his own reactions seem a bit over reactionary given the occasion. Weddings often reveal the best and worst of all the celebrants. Clearly this “father” is a total asshole who is completely dissatisfied with his own marriage, as he blithely gives his daughter away in a marriage that surely does not bode well. Young Christian may never seek out marriage after this ugly event. But he might still have found a way to celebrate his brother before his break-down.

 

Los Angeles, July 20, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).