MY MOTHER'S WEDDING - Mark Reviews Movies

My Mother's Wedding, Vertical

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 7, 2025

Learning that My Mother's Wedding is inspired to some extent by co-writer/director Kristin Scott Thomas' life only makes the movie more disappointing. Thomas, making her directorial debut, clearly knows what she wants to say with this story of lingering grief and regret. We know that because the script, co-written with John Micklethwait, gives those words to Thomas to speak during a climactic monologue.

Thomas plays Diana, a character who, based on the information offered at the end of the movie, must be inspired by her own mother. Her own fictional stand-in, then, must be Victoria (Sienna Miller), a famous actress returning to her native Britain for the event of the title. Diana is marrying her third husband, after being widowed twice in earlier years. Both of her previous husbands, who were best friends, died in plane crashes while serving in the military.

The same happened to Thomas' real-life father and stepfather, as the movie's dedication lets us know. We want this story to come across as meaningful as it must have been for the filmmaker to write and make, but the material instead plays as melodramatic arguments and shouting matches, some oddly inserted comedy, and only has anything really important to say when Thomas' character sums up the message in that lengthy speech.

It's possible the central issue with the story is one of perspective. It doesn't exactly have one, for one thing, and the closest the movie comes to a main focal point is neither Thomas, the actress playing a version of her mother in the movie, or Victoria, the character representing Thomas the real person. No, the story begins, ends, and finds most of its dramatic efforts revolving around Victoria's older sister Katherine (Scarlett Johansson).

The choice makes sense within the context of the story, which is about how Katherine, Victoria, and their younger half-sister Georgina (Emily Beecham) have yet to really get over the deaths of their father and/or stepfather, depending on which sibling we're talking about at the time. Katherine has a military career, too, just like her father and the man raised her after his best friend's tragic death. She's in the Navy, was recently promoted to command an aircraft carrier, and is making history with that assignment as the first woman to do so.

At its core, then, this is Katherine's story, right down to flashbacks of her childhood, presented in some lovely charcoal animations. Even though Thomas clearly wants to bring her own life and family into this movie as much as possible, that essentially means Victoria, Georgina, and every character who only exists because those two are in it are made secondary or, in the big picture, unnecessary to that story.

With little to do, the screenplay basically makes Victoria a constant opponent with whom Katherine can verbally and emotionally spar. It has to find something else entirely for the reserved Georgina to deal with, and that's her cad of a husband Jeremy (Joshua McGuire), whom Georgina suspects is having an affair. She has suspected that for a while now, but after seeing some text messages on his phone, she's almost certain of it now.

Victoria hires a private investigator (played by Samson Kayo) to put some cameras in her sister's house. As convoluted and ancillary as all of this sounds for a familial drama about people unable to escape grief, it plays even more awkwardly. Thomas does, at least, give us a pretty funny gag by having an instrumental version of "How Deep Is Your Love" play over some evidence, which penetrates the mystery of Jeremy's infidelity in a very specific way.

The wedding—in which Diana marries new love Geoff (James Fleet), whom the siblings think is too dull compared to their father/stepfather—is an afterthought here, and most of the movie amounts to Katherine and Victoria bickering, Georgina quietly watching the fighting on the sidelines, and some more melodrama involving the sisters' own romantic prospects. Victoria is dating a wealthy Frenchman (played by Thibault de Montalembert), but she really has eyes for Tom (Jamie Schneider), who was her first kiss as a kid but whom she worries would be intimidated by her fame.

Meanwhile, Katherine is avoiding calls from someone named Jack, and the twist is that Jack is a woman, played by Freida Pinto. They've been dating for a decade, but Katherine's career keeps her away from the relationship and her son (played by Fflyn Edwards), who has started calling Jack "mom" without Katherine noticing.

By the end, the heart of Thomas' movie is in the right place. The efforts it takes to arrive at that place, though, are too strained for the lesson to make an impact or compensate for the dramatic strain itself.

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