Richard Curtis "Four Weddings and a Funeral"

 

Richard Curtis

It's a summer Saturday morning, and Charles is still asleep. He should be on his way to Angus and Laura's wedding already! Charles is always late, and he is always going to weddings. But they are always other people's weddings, never his own. He has had plenty of girlfriends, but he is worried that he will never find the right woman to marry. Henrietta, one of his old girlfriends, thinks that he has a big problem with women. But when he does meet a beautiful woman called Carrie, he wants to be with her very much. The trouble is, he can't decide quickly enough, and she marries another man.

This is a story about love; it takes us to four weddings. Three of the weddings are for Charles's friends. Who is the fourth for? There are a few surprises at the fourth wedding! It is also a story about Charles's group of friends. We meet the lively Scarlett, in her strange clothes, Tom and Fiona, the rich brother and sister, and Gareth, the 'rude, fat man'. There is sadness too in the story, when one of the friends dies suddenly. The funeral teaches people a lot, and after it Charles finally decides what to do - or does he?

The film was made in 1993 and is enormously popular. Hugh Grant is Charles, and Andie MacDowell is Carrie. Richard Curtis wrote the words for the film, and he had to rewrite them seventeen times! His girlfriend Emma made him write a lot of it again. She used to write the letters CDB on his pages, which meant 'Could Do Better'! People suggested fifty-four different names for the film. One of them was Always Late, and one was In Love in England. Actually the story says a lot about love and weddings in Britain today. People ask themselves questions like: 'Should we have a big wedding? Should it be in the way that our parents want? Or should we get married at all?'

 

 

  

• Prev
• Next