Brits Shine At Tribeca FF

by Sandy Mandelberger, North American Editor


Three British feature films are making their premieres at this week’s Tribeca Film Festival. CHEERFUL WEATHER FOR THE WEDDING, directed and written by Donald Rice, is a world premiere. In this lighthearted relationship comedy, a woman (Felicity Jones) on the morning of her wedding, hides out and dreams of the idyllic summer before. Her scatterbrained mother (played by DOWNTOWN ABBEY’s Elizabeth McGovern) has set all the wedding arrangements, but even she can’t prepare everyone for the arrival of her daughter’s unpredictable best friend, played with great charm by Luke Treadaway. Other UK features making their U.S. premieres are HYSTERIA, a Sony Pictures Classics release of a feminist fable set in ninteenth century London. In the story, based on an award-winning stage play, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a feminist whose melancholy is solved by an electro-mechanical vibrator invented by a progressive young doctor played by Hugh Dancy. As more society women discover this unexpectedly thrilling cure, filmmaker Tanya Wexler makes a telling commentary on the eternal battle of the sexes.

In TRISHNA, celebrated film director Michael Winterbottom adapts ninteenth century novelist Thomas Hardy’s classic Victorian melodrama Tess of the D’Ubervilles to contemporary India. In the beautifully shot film, a budding romance develops between an Indian peasant woman and the son of a wealthy Englishman. The radiant Freida Pinto (SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE) stars in this intense drama about prejudice and class divisions. Six short films from the UK are also included in the Festival’s many short film programs.