Finally, We’re Back in 2022
Wedding Season (2022) 🥐🥐🥐🥐🥐 brings a lot to love.
I was very nervous about this movie with it’s cheesy title and after the first not two, but three Rom-Coms I watched from Netflix (all from this year) could not manage more than a 2 croissant rating. By the gace of the Rom-Coms gods, Wedding Season was completely different. The further I got in this movie and the more I wrote about it, the more I loved it.
A Couple to Believe In
Asha and Ravi, our two leads, are a couple that can take a broken heart and make it believe in the posibiltiy of healthy love again. These characters get an adorable falling in love montage that felt true to the characters, but their story is deeper. Ravi also demonstrates true support for her work (as an economist) even when her job is much more prestigious and culturally acceptable than his (as a DJ).
Ravi is fully independent from the start. He grew up all by himself. Imagine that! He droped out of college to become a DJ but actually figured out who he was in doing so. With Asha being a successful economist who marches to her own beat, this results in two whole humans choosing to come together in a loving romance. They both still have some things to navigate with family dynamics and personal growth, but they each have confidence in themselves.
His shows up in their relationship in a few ways. When he realized she wasn’t actually there to be on a date him, just appeasing her parents, he bounced–even though he found her attractive. He knows what work he loves, is good at, and is confident in himself enough that he feels comfortable supporting her and letting her shine. She has been burned by less mature men before, but still does what’s best for herself and makes room for trusting Ravi as he earns that trust.
Culturally Specificity & Relatable Themes
One thing that stood out in this movie for me, was the humanization of parents in this film. This first-generation immigrant story is not often showed on screen with a such a gentle, non-judgemental glimpse into Indian-American families. It balanced the frustrations of the kids resistance to their match-making while clearly showing how much pressure on the parents (especially the mothers) to find a match make their kids even when they are trying very hard to be open-minded. In the two families (of Asha and Ravi), the films also shows one family where the father cops out, blaming a lot on the mom, and with the other family, the father is the pushier one, with the mom being more permissive.
Yet, the parents don’t stay static caricatures. We not only learn a bit of their backstories, but we see them grow with their children. Not only does the dad get a transformational conversation with the daughter, but also her mother gets one as well. We aren’t left with Asha’s mother taking all the blame and no parents have to die for the child to grow in this plot.
The story also explores the shame put on Children (and adult children). Though portrayed from an Indian-American lens, as a white-American person looking in on this vignette of Indian-American culture, it’s feels like relatable a story of many cultures (I believe intentionally so). Whether or not you personally relate to the vibrant culture on screen— from the pet names the parents have for their for kids such as ‘beta’ to the mouth watering food, joyful dance, and bright fashion-forward saris–there is a universal theme. The story pushes us to learn to listen to what you know inside and to trust when your loved ones tell you what they know about themselves and their needs.
This portrayal of parents loving their kids (in the best way they know how) and growing with their kids was very touching. Often, if Rom Coms have parents in them, they are one-sided characters who maybe get one heartwarming moment but mostly are at odds with their kids. Wedding Season shows the generational gap with Asha’s frustrations with her parents creating ‘biodata’ (a resume like collection of data for attracting potential partners), while also giving us an example of parents who love allow them to know who their kids have become and choose to love despite the occasional mismatch with their expectations/hopes. Asha gets to love her DJ and her sister gets her quirky, white fiancé with their support.
A Lot More to Love
Our lead, Asha, follows some of the Rom-Com stereotypes (gorgeous, eats tons of junk food, a bit clumsy with her Sari), but she is impressive in her economist career, having an in incredible large office, an assistant, and a warm, kind Jamaican mentor who helps her get promoted above him.
Nick, the sister’s white fiancé’s appropriating Indian culture is also on point. They manage to show how problematic he is while humanizing him and getting a laugh.
Only once did they use the trope of not saying what you mean in the moment when Asha sees Ravi with his cousin and thinks the cousin is a new girlfriend. I appreciate in that moment though, she still speaks her truth and apologizes–even knowing she may not get him back. They even purposefully subvert the trope of, “that shouldn’t have happened,” the night after they first sleep together when they agreed to be just fake dating. Asha and Ravi are more in touch with her feelings than that.
The movie also features lovely cross-cultural weddings–a Jewish and Indian wedding and Hindu and Muslim wedding with a lot of joy and love between the couples.
And I’m be remise not to mention that I loved seeing Rizwan Manji from Schitts Creek as Asha’s Dad.
Finally, I love the primary theme of finding your inner knowing even in the face of family pressure, and that Asha’s knowing leads she to accepting a big promotion in London–where our lead man will have to travel to see her and even though she had extra help getting it. She deserves the promotion and doesn’t need to direct away from her dreams because of Ravi. Her friends don’t let her settle for the false choice between man or career.
Wedding Season is cheesy but I love it. “Let your love be greater than your fear,” is a nice reminder to trust ourselves and where we feel drawn.
Plot Point Question Marks
The career story for Asha is a tad confusing to me though. The arc there is that she’d an economist who’s numbers are great but doesn’t have “vision” so can’t get the client to invest in her micro-loan program. However, the client also says that micro-loans don’t solve poverty but then somehow is still persuaded in the end to invest. I wasn’t sure if it was a plot hole because of a punchy quote that they wanted to keep in the edit, or if the moral of that part of the story was that micro-loans do actually help solve poverty over generations and Asha’s family is proof?
Additionally, it felt a bit gendered to me that Asha needed to bring her softer/personal side into the presentation in order win over the client. But I could be talked out of this viewpoint by seeing Asha as reclaiming her true self and showing on screen that being your powerful, feminine self can still bring success. This may have been what was being communicated by having her choose to wear more colorful clothes in the final presentation, those which were closer to the colorful saris she wore to some of the weddings.
For what it’s worth, while I also think, “women, stop apologizing,” is just bad advice (as it seems the write of this film does), it did strike me as a bit odd that the random white assistant can in at the climax to set the record straight that Asha needed to apologize. It was clearly to make a point that she was overemphasizing the Ravi’s dishonestly (secretly donating a lot of money to her micro-loan program) to protect herself because of her past dating trauma. However, I felt Ravi should have also apologized more too.
That being said, I really appreciated that Asha called him out for being patronizing. He said she could get the micro-loan program up and going, and she did but it was his donation that got her the promotion. It is fine if that’s where he wants to put his money, but he should have done it above board.
Finally, I was not buying the love at first sight for Asha’s dad with the mom and Ravi with Asha but will let it slide because I there are many ways to be attracted to someone (physical, mental, emotional…), and that mixes quickly with the various types of love (romantic, friendship, familial…). Who am I to say that’s not what they felt/experienced?
Wedding Season adds a lot to this genre and brings us back to the progress of 2022. It is it’s own beautiful story, not just a retelling of the same old problematic white Rom-Com tropes with a POC. Hopefully, we can get more similarly represenative and humanizing films like this soon!
We’ll see how Love in the Villa stacks up next!
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