The Art of Falling Madly in Love with Your Best Friend
A Queer Approach to Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) – Queer
I don’t think love is quantifiable in words, but that has never stopped me from trying to put them to it before. I think many writers and artists would agree with that idea that getting to the proverbial heart of love and laying it bear for all to read succinctly is itself a Sisyphean task, but every one of us, desperate to convey this life-altering emotion and tell our loved ones just how much they mean in precisely the right assemblage of words, will gladly take up the boulder every day of the week and then some. I don’t think anyone has managed to put the perfect words together in the right order to perfectly capture it, but I definitely do think there have been some valiant efforts that get quite close to explaining what the shorthand “I love you” means. And, a shock to me upon rewatching Richard Curtis’s Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) this week, I think Curtis comes so very close. Not with the main couple, they’re terrible, but with the couple Curtis gently guides us to as the truest form of love in the film: that between Matthew and Gareth (John Hannah and Simon Callow).
Interestingly enough, I probably would have focused this review on them regardless of the approach that came up on the Review Roulette wheel, which was Queer. I want to make it clear that their love and the portrayal of it is far more meaningful than their sexualities and that will not be the primary focus of this review. Queer can mean so much more than merely being related to LGBTQ+ identities, and I think it would actually be a disservice to the love shown between Matthew and Gareth to reduce it to the fact that it is between two men. Queer, here, is that which is counter to normative, abnormal in any sense, and by that definition, true love is the queerest representation of love in any romantic cinema.
There are a few things I want to think through in this review. Firstly, to get it out of the way, the openness and frankness with which this film addresses lesbian and gay identities is quite moving and remarkable for 1994. Philadelphia (1993) was groundbreaking only a year prior for such a mainstream film, and I think Four Weddings is quite progressive for being so unapologetic about having two of the main characters who are so central to the plot of the film not only be gay men, but in a loving and seemingly open relationship.
Secondly, they aren’t only in a relationship, they are madly in love with one another in a way we do not get treated to in most cinema. We just do not see such a deep connection between two people without any toxicity or drama or questionable behaviour, just pure love, and especially then not between two supporting cast members. Matthew’s monologue (or, really, soliloquy) about Gareth is the most moving part of the film for me [contains spoilers, but available here]. He starts this speech talking about Gareth’s jokes that they can never be formally married as a gay couple in England before moving on to recounting how others perceive him. When it comes to his own perceptions, however, Matthew refuses to even attempt it, unable, as I say at the start, to distil his love for his partner into a handful of words that will pale in comparison to the indescribable emotion itself. Instead, Matthew borrows the words of the poet W. H. Auden to get to the closest approximation without betraying the breadth of his own love by trying to force it into inadequacy.
Thirdly, this film explores friendship and familial love far more than solely romantic love, and I think that’s beautiful. In that speech, Matthew is introduced as “Gareth’s closest friend”. We can take that to be an unwillingness to acknowledge their sexuality and the nature of their relationship in an English church, or we can take that in a deeply moving way, as I choose to. Friendship, in my opinion, is the root of all love – familial, platonic, romantic, unconditional, etc. – and is required for the true expressions of those other types. Four Weddings has a mediocre romance at the centre, a “we keep running into each other at the wrong times and know nothing about one another, but we are in love anyway” romance that, quite frankly, I do not buy in the slightest as any form of real love.
Matthew and Gareth have a profound friendship, so much so that Charles (Hugh Grant) says, “All these years we've been single and proud of it and never noticed that two of us were married all this time.” Their romantic love was almost secondary to their friendship, invisible to others because of how strong their love has always been. And I think that is the most subversive part of the film. It’s not about any of the weddings individually or marriage or romantic love at all, really. I think Four Weddings and a Funeral is a film about friends being there over time and space and events and moments and emotions and all the rest that makes up a life together. Another friend in the core group summarises the truly quite radical message of the film when she remarks at one point, “‘Friends’ isn’t bad, you know. ‘Friends’ is quite something.”
I said at the top that I was shocked to be so deeply moved by this film, and that is because the first time I watched it, I was watching it as a rom-com. I do not like this film as a rom-com. I thought the rom part was shallow and unconvincing at best, and to an extent I still do about the main duo we are meant to be rooting for throughout. However, watching it with a queer approach in mind (and maybe watching it with nearly a decade’s emotional growth between viewings), I found the real love expressed between friends and how that became the much more beautiful romance we see in the film. True love from true friendship, portrayed with an artistry and finesse by those two actors that so many would only dream of being able to capture. As a wedding film, I think Four Weddings is fine. It’s funny, it’s got some good moments, it’s fine. As a film about friendship and radical love that surpasses the vast majority of rom-coms out there, in so many ways beyond what I wrote here, I think it’s stunning.
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
Auteur
Four Weddings and a Funeral was released about a decade before another Richard Curtis fan favourite, Love Actually (2003). I have said a lot about Love Actually in other spaces, but the thing I’d highlight here is an interesting parallel that Curtis is more concerned with diversifying the types of love beyond simply romantic. These two films go far to not only present but to fully explore the foundations of love in many forms between both individuals and groups. While I don’t always agree with some of those portrayals, I very much love the effort and acknowledgement of wider possibilities for and breadth of human emotions on screen.