Let’s be honest. There’s really no such thing as a simple wedding. Writer/director Sara Zandieh drives this home in her new rom-com A Simple Wedding, starring the gorgeous and hilarious Tara Grammy. I love seeing films by women that center on women coming from or representing other cultures. It brings me such joy to see an American comedy about an Iranian-American woman, with Iranian co-stars. Even better is having an intergenerational story with three Iranian women, especially when one is learning to balance both American and Iranian cultures in her own life. A Simple Wedding is a wonderful peek into one Iranian family’s experience choosing to live with varying degrees of assimilation while celebrating their own cultural traditions.
Grammy plays Iranian-American Nousha Husseini, who suffers the pressures from her family many daughters feel: to marry, and marry well. When she meets and falls for quirky artist and DJ Alex (Christopher O’Shea), she worries her loving, very pushy mom (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and engineer dad (Houshang Touzie) will find him unworthy. Meanwhile, Alex has a complicated family that includes divorced parents, a dad (Peter Mackenzie) who left his wife for another man (James Eckhouse), and mom Maggie (Rita Wilson), who also who still smarts from rejection, and fears she’ll never find someone to love.
For the complete review, go to the AWFJ.org site HERE.
