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White Wedding, by Jann Turner, South Africa
Feature Film Competition
critique
rédigé par Nashen Moodley
publié le 12/04/2009
Jann Turner, filmmaker
Jann Turner, filmmaker
Kenneth Nkosi ("Elvis")
Kenneth Nkosi ("Elvis")
Rapulana Seiphemo (Tumi)
Rapulana Seiphemo (Tumi)
Jodie Whittaker (Rose)
Jodie Whittaker (Rose)
Zandile Msutwana (Ayanda)
Zandile Msutwana (Ayanda)

White Wedding, the feature film debut by Jann Turner, is a light and uplifting road movie culminating in a wedding. Along the way, set against the backdrop of the beautiful South African landscape, we encounter a variety of serendipitous meetings between strangers, a bar filled with unreconstructed racists, and a goat named George.

Elvis (Kenneth Nkosi) is about to get married to Ayanda (Zandile Msutwana) and sets off on the long trip from Johannesburg to Cape Town. When a good deed causes him to miss the bus, a series of delays ensue, and he is in danger of missing his own nuptials.
Ayanda is planning a "white" wedding, one in a fancy hotel with a limited number of guests rather than the sprawling, open-invitation township wedding her mother would prefer.
The task of getting Elvis to the wedding in time falls to his best friend, Tumi (Rapulana Seiphemo), a notorious womaniser with an inability to commit. The friends are joined on the arduous road trip by a stowaway, a British tourist called Rose (Jodie Whittaker) who is in South Africa to escape the humiliation of being betrayed by her British fiancé.

Together, Elvis, Tumi and Rose make the long trip, encountering obstacles all along the way, from a crabby granny to a bar full of gun-toting racists. They argue and bond, reflecting on love, friendship and the concept of marriage.
Meanwhile, Ayanda is being charmed in Cape Town by an incredibly wealthy ex-boyfriend who has clearly decided, at the worst possible time, that he would like Ayanda back.
The ultimate outcome is never in doubt, and White Wedding provides a funny and occasionally incisive route towards its inevitable culmination.

With a hip South African soundtrack, and well-acted with great chemistry between Seiphemo, Nkosi and Whittaker, White Wedding is a refreshingly light and angst-free romantic comedy, and a debut filled with promise.

Nashen Moodley, South-Africa

Paper written during the workshop : Bulletin Africiné (Ouagadougou), Fespaco 2009.
Bulletin published by the African Federation of Film Critic (AFFC, Dakar), with the support of ministère burkinabè de la Culture, du Tourisme et de la Communication, the Fespaco, the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF, Paris), the Ministère français des Affaires Etrangères, the Centro Orientamento Educativo (COE, Milan) and Rurart (Poitou Charentes, France)

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