My Best Friend's Wedding (Rom-Com)

P.J Hogan’s 1997 romantic comedy, My best friend’s wedding, clearly establishes its generic conventions in the opening sequence. The narrative trajectory of a rom com is towards romantic resolution and traditionally this is signified by a wedding. The target audience for romantic comedy is mainly female and the opening sequences of this genre of film seek to engage female aspirations and desires. Here, of course, we encounter our first political debate. Rom coms are generally deeply conservative in their gender politics and can often present a version of women’s desires that is fundamentally outmoded. So, is an opening sequence that explicitly presents women as desiring of marriage purely pandering to archaic sexual politics or is there something more interesting going on?

An opening sequence of a film, regardless of genre, seeks to do a number of things. It establishes genre, tone, narrative drive and character type, as well as offering institutional information. This 1997 rom com introduces the viewer to all of these elements. The initial screen is pink and the camera then tilts down to reveal 3 young, white women dressed for a wedding. They are joined in the frame by a fourth woman who is slightly more forward and thus seems to be the main character in the sequence. Apart from the women and the pink set, the mise en scene is bare at this point. The women’s clothes echo each other in the wedding theme. The credits that start to play have a hand-written font. Combine these two elements and we start to understand a nostalgic and intertextual tone to the sequence. This does not look like a modern film, but rather an example of a glossy 1950s/ early 1960s Hollywood product. 

The diegetic sound cements both the intertextual referencing and the genre credentials of the film. The women begin to sing “ Wishin’ and hopin’” a track first released by Dusty Springfield in 1964. The lyrics give advice to women on how to keep a man and in combination with the mise en scene, advice on how to marry that man. The film, it seems, is attempting to construct various questions here for the audience. Are we about to see an homage to previous Hollywood products, an un-ironic narrative about a wedding being the epitome of success for a woman or a modern day comment on 20th century gender politics? Actually, the film is a combination of the two latter elements.

The opening credits quickly establish it as a star vehicle for Julia Roberts. Her name is first in the credits and at that time, Roberts certainly had box-office appeal. The cinematography and editing are also used in this sequence to create an address to the audience. The women are predominantly shot in long shot, except for cuts to their reactions to the lines in the song. These women are framed as if on a stage, performing for their audience and for the dream man about whom they are singing. There are several direct addresses to camera from these characters in which they entreat the audience to understand their plight. The mise en scene then progresses to include other iconography of a wedding. The main character shows off her sparkling diamond ring and the others look at it enviously. A wedding veil then enters the sequence, as do bouquets for the three women who are now signified as bridesmaids. Achievement and success are synonymous with a woman’s wedding. The bride character continues to be adorned with the trappings of the wedding; a lacy garter and a large bouquet. As she accepts the bouquet she stands on a chair; literally and figuratively above her counterparts. She throws the bouquet behind her, but instead of one of the bridesmaids catching it, she catches it herself. This action is combined with quite a comic whistle noise. It is becoming increasingly clear in this sequence that we are not supposed to take what is happening at face value.

The characters then begin a highly choreographed dance routine. They are becoming excitable with the prospect of one of their number finally being ‘taken off the shelf’. Next there is an overhead shot of the four women, lying on the ground with their heads together in a shot designed to evoke the elaborate sequences used in 1950s/ early 1960s films ‘for women’. The sequence ends with the three bridesmaids putting on the bride’s veil, giving her the bouquet and then kneeling down in front of her in a declaration of their admiration. The camera then zooms in on the bride’s face as she is bathed in celestial light and accompanied by a gospel singer. The solemnity and religiousness of her success is explicit. Of course, this is mock solemnity, as the overly emoting characters, the diegetic sound and the structure of the sequence’s narrative have demanded that we see it as ironic.