"The Lord of the ring: but, without the rings"

Title: Mi Primera Boda (My First Wedding)
Year: 2011
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Director: Ariel Winograd
Writer: Patricio Vega
Runtime: 102min
Cast: Natalia Oreiro, Daniel Hendler, Martín Piroyanski, Muriel Santa Ana, Clemente Cancela
Produc.: Film Suez, Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales (INCAA), Luz Libre Producciones, Televisión Federal (Telefé), Tresplanos Cine, surDream Productions

In My First Wedding, Adrián (Daniel Hendler) must do everything that has at his disposal to delay the ceremony of his marriage to Leonora (Natalia Oreiro), after his nervousness made him lose both rings.

Adrián is Jewish and Leonora, Catholic. Initially they should have chosen from one of the two religions to perform the ritual on the day of their marriage. However, thanks to some friends that are beside the point both managed to find both a Jewish priest and a Christian one that had no problems in sharing as hosts of the ceremony. Starting from this unusual situation and other situations with similar characteristics will be how this comedy works and knowing to stay away from decadent jokes.

As if their differences in religion were small matter, throw into this that he is very mild and a gentle guy and she instead a woman of strong temper. This difference of character is the reason or everything that happens in the film, when Adrián is terrified when his clumsiness makes him lose both wedding rings, although one gets to see as evident that among them there is a true love. Then Adrián must do everything possible to prevent the emcees to arrive on time for the celebration, mainly because he understands that if his girlfriend finds out about his accident, she strangles him.

What to do to gain time? wonders the groom. Adrián rides a horse, gallops up a sign indicating the way to the residence and rotates it to confuse the remise chauffeur.

Back at the residence´s garden, Adrián now tells his cousin Fede (Martin Piroyanski), a dim-witted young man, of the mess he just got into, and both are launched in the search of Leonora´s precious wedding ring.

In this film one also has the chance to have fun not with one but with several of the guests. This is the case of uncle Lárazo (José "Pepe" Soriano), who never stops asking marijuana to Adrián, or the case of Inés (Muriel Santa Ana), a young lesbian who soon has a crush on another girl. And there is also the case of Esteban (Clemente Cancela), who, though considerably older than Leonora, had an affair with her years ago when he was a profesor and she was his student, and who has had the guts to accept her invitation, showing up and behaving like a cynic.

Finally, lost on the way to the residence we have Father Patricio and Rabbi Mendl, both divinely interpreted neither more nor less than by Marcos Mundstock and Daniel Rabinovich, best known for their excellent participation in the comedy group Les Luthiers. The perfomance of these two men, who already possess an intrinsic quality to make us laugh, arises the question if perhaps haven´t they written their own dialogues. Taking each of their religions as a starting point they pass the time exchanging different observations with which they joke about very finely.

So, My First Wedding works a triple parallelism (the groom, the bride and the priests) and jumps from one to another, to see how Adrián increasingly entangles; how Leonora begins to wonder if she still wants to get marry, and how the two religious men live together without major complaints with the delay in their arrival.

Turning briefly to the failed aspects, it is true that while the issue of the lost ring is good material to exploit, yet it comes a moment when the joke wears out. By the time Adrián and Fede have been long looking for it, and on top of that now they lose the other one, the dilemma of the ring has already expanded too much, making it clear that creativity stagnated there. We must be content with was we see, and therefore this comedy won´t stop being one of the pile.

My rating: 6/10

Para acceder a la versión en español haga click aquí