Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (2012)

"If ..." is the leading word for this movie. But, beside 'if' Dolly was not sent to Albania and it did not happen. The flash backs tells the why's.What is not told is subtle between the lines: Dolly seems to be pregnant and is married with haste to the stand-in Tom Owen. But why invited Dolly Joseph, her summery adventure? He is not told of her assumed pregnancy and unable to do what a noble and gentle English should have done. But "time and tide waits not" is said and the blind servant, passing the glasshouse, sees everything. Joseph and Dolly where inseparable just past summer, up until he left for Greece. Tom Owen is in this British Victorian "Downton Abbey" of 1932 Josephs stand-in as second choice. Everybody is happy to take their part in this staged unhappy happiness. "Are you?" "If you know it, it's too late" is said. The title "Cheerful Weather" focuses the sunny weather, but everything else is far beyond sunny cheerfulness. Has the stand-in Tom a deal? As in "The Day after the Fair". The pregnant illiterate maid Anna, helped by her mistress with the letter-writing to her lover she met at Salsbury fair. The cheated barrister accepts to marry Annas body, telling upper class Edith, the author of the letters: "Legally I marry Anna, in my heart I marry you." "Do you feel less happy if you know you are happy?" is asked. "I 'wish' you could give me a reason to come with you." And the warning: "Be careful what you wish." No reason to run away. Tradition is stronger. Why invited Dolly her summer love to her wedding and does not see him? She upstairs. He downstairs. Neither she goes downstairs or he upstairs before it is too late and jump the fence of tradition. Waiting for the other to take the jump: unaware that nobody can take the decision to jump for the other. They see each other. Downstairs. In time or too late? Ready for the run? Used to traditional happy ends - actually here: no happy end. We wait as we are used but it does not happen. Unable to witness the act in church he stays at him: should have been his wedding. But "circumstances intervene." But beyond circumstances and what is called destiny? Beyond tradition. Was this the reason that he was invited, waiting for him upstairs. Ready for the run.

A British period piece with romance, family relationships, a wedding, Elizabeth McGovern. What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything. Perhaps there was a Part 1 out there somewhere that I missed. It certainly would have established who these characters were, exactly who was related to whom, and why they specifically were at the middling country estate on the wedding day of a miserable bride to be. That the bride had a mother (McGovern) and a sister of younger but indecipherable age was clear. That a miserable mope named Joseph was not totally welcome, yet given the run of the house was established. That Joseph and Dolly, the bride to be of some other fellow, had a passionate,fun-filled past was established. Beyond that was a cast of characters -relatives? friends? neighbors? servants - of no purpose other than some feeble comic relief involving confetti explosions and pratfalls; or wiser-than-the-main-characters insights into what was up between Dolly and Joseph. Flashbacks showed how right-for-each-other were Dolly and Joseph. Now she was marrying another, had invited Joseph to the wedding, wouldn't see him, pined for him in the flashbacks, married the other guy anyway, and left with him for South America without the tortoise given to her by Joseph, which the cad of a husband wouldn't let her take along. Meanwhile Joseph wanders around the house, doesn't attend the wedding ceremony, pines for Dolly in flashbacks, can't get up the gumption to stop the wedding, and finally becomes upset enough, when it's too late, to spill the dramatic revelation that Dolly is pregnant. The weeping by the onlookers to this revelation was so stagy as to be more comic than the confetti bombs. All in all truly a badly conceived and directed effort.

Because of the presence of Elizabeth McGovern and other similar traits of an early 20th century English estate family, this movie felt like a failed script for the TV program Downton Abbey. There was no particular compelling reason for this story to be greenlit in the manner it was produced except to take advantage of this similarity.It's nice to see the subtle anti-romance character traits of the two leads play out over the narrative, but it's more curiously interesting than it is intensely interesting. The sophomoric foreshadowing and symbolism feel extremely contrived and almost insulting. The scenes that should be amusing are not amusing. The cleverish storytelling isn't clever enough to make you want to care about anyone or what happens to them. And the big reveal isn't at all revelatory, but serves more as a device to unlock the grand mystery of why these people behave the way they do. Sad to say, the mystery isn't all that grand and the viewer is left with the bad taste of being inexpertly manipulated.

I found this one on Netflix streaming movies. I was curious about it because one of the stars is Elizabeth McGovern who also stars in the very popular "Downton Abbey" series. While I enjoyed it mildly overall, it is an easily forgettable movie.Set in 1932 England, the opening sequence, of an old-fashioned press being set up to print invitations in gold lettering, is very interesting. Felicity Jones is Dolly Thatcham, and it is her wedding day. She is marrying a very nice man. But Luke Treadaway as Joseph Patten shows up as a guest, and this has an upsetting effect on Dolly. It seems she doesn't want to come out of her room, and she "relaxes" by drinking rum from the bottle. Seemingly too much rum.All of this is mysterious to us, the audience, but reasons are slowly revealed. They use the technique of parallel flashbacks, we see one or the other in a present (1932) scene, then in a somewhat older scene. They keep them obvious by using a slight blue cast for the present scenes and a slight yellow cast for the flashback scenes.We slowly find that the issue is the love affair Dolly and Joseph had, when he decided he needed to travel abroad for an extended period. A young British woman in the 1930s could not wait too long, and she found a new man, and now she was marrying him.So it is basically a story of love lost and moving on with one's life.Elizabeth McGovern is Mrs. Thatcham , Dolly's mother, with her best fake British accent. I've always liked McGovern, but it seems a curious choice, given that it is not a major role and there are so many fine British actresses.