After The Wedding Blu-ray Review
Big secrets will be revealed After The Wedding. Big drama is the star of this show. Julianne Moore, Michele Williams and Billy Crudup all come together to entice us into mystery with this story of family, sacrifice and unlikely necessity. Whether you will want to know the secret remains to be seen. More on that below…
Film 
After The Wedding centers on Theresa Young (Moore), a wealthy benefactor looking to give a large sum of money to Isabel (Williams) to fund her burgeoning school in India. Isabel loves her work, her kiddos and the changes she is able to make in the underdeveloped down she works in. She feels a sense of pride in seeing changes made from her work. When she receives Theresa’s invite to New York to discuss the funding of her school, she goes hoping to return with a pile of money and some new hopes realized from the donation. What comes of the visit is far more than Isabel can imagine.
Upon her arrival, Theresa reveals that this is also the eve of her daughter’s wedding. Grace (Abby Quinn) is a glowing young bride. Isabel also meets Oscar (Crudup) who happens to be a sculpture artist. Upon seeing Oscar, Isabel becomes overwrought with anxiety… But why? To reveal it here could spoil the film, so my overview will stop here. Now, onto the critical points…
Dull… Dull is the word I can use confidently to describe this film. The actors are elegant yet surprisingly down to earth. There may be wealthy folks here, but they’re all seemingly normal despite their well-to-do nature. Theresa is a take no prisoners businesswoman, sharp as a tack. Oscar has the presence of the typical every-husband. Isabel is like the white savior of her village in India. It’s all so pretty and prepackaged. That isn’t a compliment. This film is banal. It’s slow, predictable and boring. You don’t care for these characters so much as wish they’d move a little faster. The revelations and mystery reveals don’t really do anything to satiate your satisfaction either. It’s hard to put that on the actors in the film as everyone in the small cast is capable and try to put something interesting in their work. Julianne Moore is as always giving her all, even with this blah script. She remains one of the few people on screen who can cry with such an agony through her whole body.
Director/Writer Bart Freundlich is mostly to blame for pacing issues. There really aren’t many moments to let this one go with the breeze and move more quickly. There aren’t a lot of happy moments either. There are mostly just disappointments, some failures, some losses, and some goodbyes. In the end I was left wondering if I had actually cared for the characters or if I just watched this because of my admiration for those playing the stiff, hardly fleshed out characters… Before you decide to find out what happens After The Wedding, skip it…
Video
- Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC
- Resolution: 1080p
- Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
- Clarity/Detail: Bad this movie is… Looks wise it’s rather gorgeous. The film was finished at 4K and the clarity on display is a huge giveaway of the medium the film was captured at. Set pieces and exteriors are all fleshed out with fine detail overall. There are some really nice scenes that take place in the evening and some beautiful flyover moments in India as well. No detail is spared at all.
- Depth: Not 3D by any means, the depth here is quite nice regardless. Outdoor scenes look especially good, with lovely rich texture to savor.
- Black Levels: Blacks are beautiful in this one.
- Color Reproduction: All primary colors are represented in some way in this film. They all look beautiful and are pleasing to the eye.
- Flesh Tones: Natural and for some of the actors, even revealing.
- Noise/Artifacts: Nice and clean!
Audio
- Audio Format(s): English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Subtitles: English, French
- Dynamics: This is a talky drama. Dialogue is the star and it’s rendered perfectly here. There isn’t much to report for dynamics though, as surrounds are used sparingly and music comes and goes in brief spurts.
- Low Frequency Extension: Music is the only extension of bass for this movie. The results are serviceable though, and of no complaint.
- Surround Sound Presentation: A few moments of surround sound appear in the film. One particular scene is in India with Isabel and her school children. Another is the wedding during the toasts, and the clinking and cheering pop up in the surround channels.
- Dialogue Reproduction: Loud, clear, and exactly what this mix was made for.
Extras
After The Wedding comes courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment via their Movie On Demand service. There is no slipcover or digital code. The sole features are The Making of After The Wedding and the trailer. The Making of featurette is a scant one, not really worth sitting through…
Summary
After The Wedding is a film that could’ve benefitted from some more substance and less predictability. The film wastes the talents of it’s cast and the time of it’s audience. For me, this one isn’t worth the disc it was burned on, but for fans of slow burn dramas with little to go on story wise, this may be the film for you… for me, it was just a vapid, blah story with little to offer.
**Paid Link — As an Amazon Associate I Earn from qualifying purchases**
