I’m watching four weddings and a funeral

[Frynye]

I’m watching four weddings and a funeral for the first time since I was about 15 and I have questions. When did everyone stop wearing hats to weddings and why are so many people (Carrie mainly) wearing white to weddings

Oh, I had a giant crush on James Wilby!!! Though a friend sees the entire film as leafing up to Rupert ‘Scudder’ Graves coming through the window.😀

Denholm Elliott, who was bi, also had a small role, come to think of it.

I saw it at about 16 and it was totally obvious to me the Mathew and Gareth were a couple! And I don’t remember homosexuality being at all shocking in the 90s?
The Auden poem at the funeral- I always thought that poem was about the end of a relationship and was intended to be almost comically mawkish.” Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone”? Maybe I read it wrong though!
Anyway, Scarlett was the best character by far and I wish people would wear hats again.

But Carrie marries a man she admits herself is old enough to be her father, and not even as backstory, right there in the film.

(I’m still bemused as to how so many people never noticed Gareth and Matthew were a couple — I mean, all those references to two of them being essentially married all along, the way the camera cut to Gareth’s unaware face and Charles going to find him (specifically him, not Scarlett, Tom, or Fiona) fas soon as it’s clear Matthew has died, Gareth giving the eulogy and walking with the parents, saying Charles’ brother is fishy, and being in the photo montage over the credits with another man…?)

It’s Gareth that dies, not Matthew. I think.

‘Funeral Blues’ has a slightly weird history — it was first written as a satire on the death of a dictator for a verse play called The Ascent of F6 by Auden and Isherwood, then rejigged as a cabaret song by rewriting the verses that were too specific to the play (hence the title). God knows who decided to recast it as a poem for a dead lover in FWAAF, and it mostly works effectively, but some of the slightly odder or more grandiloquent lines are left over from its original version where the implication is that the death of a fascist ruler should stop the world.

(And I’ve just realised I got Gareth and Matthew’s names mixed up earlier. )

Yes, I just realised! (I think I feel that John Hannah looks far more like a Gareth than a Matthew…)

I’m just here to say that I would have snogged Bernard. Lovely man, offering his services 😆

Bernard’s chin fascinates me. It’s so chinny and stalwart-looking.

saw this when I was 13 or 14 and again later in my teens and I knew Gareth and Matthew were both gay, but I didn’t know they were a couple! I think because they don’t show anything explicitly to indicate they are together and I always thought the thing about ‘two of us had been married all along’ was a reference to the intensity of their friendship (because if they were in a long term relationship then saying they were like a married couple doesn’t really mean anything?).

i know gay couples were unusual in films etc at the time but I’d been watching Eastenders for years by then and they had Colin and Barry living together and kissing so I suppose I thought if Gareth and Matthew were a couple it would be more obvious!

I forgot Denholm Elliott was in it! I love all the Merchant Ivory films. I liked Rupert Graves in A Handful of Dust which stared Kristen Scott Thomas and James Wilby as well!

"damn fine filly", the guy whose wife never stopped bonking old Toby de Lisle.

Every time I see one of these two actors in anything else, I exclaim “Four Weddings and a Funeral!” Two great bit parts with some cracking lines. “He was my head of house. Buggered me senseless. Still, taught me a thing or two about life”.

Also surprised that people didn’t realise Matthew and Gareth were a couple. I was 14 and I got it! It’s right there in their first scene when they’re getting ready for the wedding. I mean they weren’t housemates, were they?

I still laugh my head off at the “she’s no longer my girlfriend” bit, that’s a brilliant scene. Hugh Grant’s facial expressions.

i went to see it with my friend and when Carrie does the “is it still raining?” line, my friend stuck two fingers down her throat and made a very loud vomiting noise. People behind and around us were in hysterics. Great memories.

I think I thought they were housemates rent. Gay housemates but just housemates! Like Scarlett and Hugh Grant were just friends sharing

Tbf they are basically the same character so you could intertwine them

What can I say, I’m old before my time! 😂😂😂

And immediately afterwards when he is banging his head against the post and the old man with dementia comes along- “hi, how are you?” That whole scene is one of the best bits of the film.

@CorporaINobbyNobbsyes I can see how that could be the case! Except that I think of them wipes shaving foam from the other’s face…

Oh my! The Glasgow version sounds like it could have very much been my wedding 🙈

Yep, same here. Ever since Four Weddings.

Sorry if somebody else has already answered this, but you could remove your hat when the MOB took hers off - it would be very poor form to take yours off first. And it would be considered pretty inconsiderate of her if she kept it on through the meal, so generally it came off as we sat down. Then you’d put it under the table or on the back of your seat or something.
I wore a hat to a wedding 3 years ago and was not alone! I hadn’t realised they had become so unfashionable.

I wish they would come back!

Scarlett and Charles were brother and sister!

I love this film! I also love wearing a hat to weddings! I got married in 2003 and there were still lots of hats, worn by young women as well as the older generation.

Scarlett and Charles were not brother and sister.

I’m surprised at the number of people who didn’t realise Gareth and Matthew were a couple. “Traitors in our midst” says Tom.

This is such a great British film!