Jenny's Wedding

June has been the month of Pride for the people in America. It should be after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of gay marriages across all the fifty states. Which is why Mary Agnes Donoghue could not have come up with a better time to release her latest movie – Jenny’s Wedding.  But I doubt even an opportune timing like this will keep it afloat at the box office. With the kind of story line it revolves around, it is already doomed to drown.

Jenny’s Wedding revolves around the eponymous Jenny and her impending wedding of course. Jenny (Katherine Heigl) comes from a loving family with a mother and father played brilliantly by Linda Emond and Tom Wilkinson, an older brother Michael (Matthew Metzger) and a sister Ann (Grace Gummer). With both of her siblings being married with kids, she comes in the line of fire from her parents, especially her mother for still being single. So, the big secret is that Jenny is gay, a fact hat she has hidden expertly from her conservative Christian family. She finally decides to come out to her parents when she decides that she too wants to get married to her beloved partner Kitty, played very meekly by Alexis Bledel. And thus begins the drama.

Linda Emond as the mother is the perfect picture of a Christian conservative who lives in a nice cul de sac while worrying too much about what the neighbours will think. Tom Wilkinson is an adorable father. He cares deeply for his daughter and her happiness, yet always skirts around the issue of her sexuality simply because he has no clue how to deal with it. The revelation of their favourite child’s sexuality is a genuine struggle of conscience for the two of them. They want Jenny to be happy but allowing her to be happy by living her life, they realize that they are unhappy.

There is one particularly emotional scene when Jenny brings Kitty along to the funeral parlour to attend a family acquaintance’s funeral between Jenny and her father. And like a man he avoids talking about the confrontation with his wife, by turning on the radio when she tries to bring up the topic.

Also I realize that the film is titled Jenny’s Wedding, but this does not justify Alexis Bledel’s remarkably short screen space. I mean Jenny is after all getting married to someone. So aren’t her perspectives important to understand how the episode can affect a couple when one has just come out of the closet?! I found Kitty to be a marvelously supportive partner; not only was she okay with her girlfriend still being in the closet with her family, she weathered through all the drama of Jenny and her family when Jenny finally did come out.

The climactic titular sequence is full of grandiose and pomp and like a story with a very predictable curve, ends with a happy ending, like most of Shakespeare’s comedies.