Entertaining and Thought Provoking
This one was a nice random discovery on Netflix. Dev Patel (totally unrecognizable from his Slumdog Millionaire days) and Radhika Apte (charming and mysterious) both turn in solid performances. The settings are also practically characters themselves (filmed in India and Pakistan).
The story has shades of Bonnie & Clyde but also shows just how few options exist for women in so many parts of the world. Samira realizes that she has to be the master of her fate or others will determine it for her.
From Screen Daily:
Set in Pakistan and India, The Wedding Guest shot for six weeks from mid-January to March 2018 with everything bar one day filmed on location in the two countries. However, only a small amount of second-unit work was shot in Pakistan due to the difficulties of filming what would be considered a contentious film in the country coupled with tensions between the two countries running high.
“I went across the border from Lahore to Amritsar to do the journey Dev does in the film,” Winterbottom says. “But we would not have been able to get any of the small crew from one side to the other. Even getting access from one to another is complicated. So given we could recreate Pakistan in the Punjab in India, we did that.”
Winterbottom admits having to conceive a Pakistani village in India was frustrating. “The texture of the place in Pakistan is really great. It’s always quite frustrating trying to recreate a specific environment somewhere else,” he explains.