An Uneven 'Wedding' Loaded With Heart

by Jack Mathews
(LA Times - July 17, 1998)

How many people does it take to have a Polish wedding? Four: a pregnant girl, a reluctant groom, a priest and someone to hold the shotgun.

The script for rookie writer-director Theresa Connelly's Polish Wedding doesn't quite pause to summarize its plot in the form of an ethnic joke, but that's the general idea. Every marriage and potential marriage in this heartfelt but often tone-deaf domestic comedy originates in careless passion between people who aren't sure how much they even like each other.

Bolek Pzoniak (Gabriel Byrne), a baker in the Polish Detroit community of Hamtramck, and his still lusty wife Jadzia (Lena Olin) got married to legitimize the birth of the first of their five children, and have stayed together all these years more out of familial ritual than love.

That first child, Ziggi (Daniel LaPaine), married Sofie (Mili Avital) to legitimize the birth of their firstborn, and are getting to know each other under the most stressful circumstances.

Now, Hala (Claire Danes), the youngest of the Pzoniak brood and the designated virgin of the coming Procession of the Virgins, is in a family way, thanks to Russell (Adam Trese), the tomcat cop she's been sneaking away to meet in the middle of the night.

Connelly, who grew up in Hamtramck, intends Polish Wedding as an homage to the spirit and rootedness of the immigrant families in her blue-collar neighborhood, and her three central characters have certainly been crafted with loving care.

Jadzia, the controlling matriarch of the Pzoniak clan, is a vibrant, passionate woman who remains sympathetic even while expending her sexual energy in an indiscreet, long-running affair with Roman (Rade Serbedzija), a successful businessman.

Hala is her mother's child, recklessly adventuresome, and despite all the warning signs around her--the tension between Ziggi and Sofie, the strain of her parents' marriage--she's on a fast track to parenthood.

Bolek, meanwhile, is the picture of a beaten man, waiting around like a dog, Hala tells him, while his wife is off with her lover. It breaks his heart, but he won't confront her for fear of losing her.

Somehow, Connelly wants us to believe that the family ties here are strong enough to withstand any test, from being cash-strapped in an overcrowded house, to the rambunctious kids getting themselves into trouble, to the passive father being betrayed. It's a hard sell, and Connelly doesn't quite have the storytelling savvy to pull it off.

Each time the film reaches a critical juncture, Connelly's solution is to distract us with slapstick farce. One minute, poor pathetic Bolek is so down in his cups that you're worrying about a suicide; the next minute, he and Jadzia are teamed up with their sons in the madcap kidnapping--complete with jaunty Polish folk music--of Hala's elusive boyfriend.

If the real point of Polish Wedding is that life in Hamtramck is so chaotically fraught that each new trauma buries the last, then a mere movie can't do it justice.

Los Angeles Times 1998

Family's story a kin to Moonstruck

by Judy Gerstel
(Toronto Star - July 17, 1998)

The wryly titled Polish Wedding, which does not have a wedding scene, is an engaging, slight movie about a lusty working-class family in the Detroit Polish community of Hamtramck. The only daughter among four sons is Hala, a nubile, spirited adolescent played by Claire Danes.

The story is about her coming of age as a woman, but the performances of Gabriel Byrne and, especially, Lena Olin, as her sensuous parents, Bolek and Jadzia Pzoniak, are so potent that Polish Wedding becomes as much the mother's story. In any case, like mother, like daughter.

Drenched in ethnicity and family and focused on the mazurka of mating, the film is easily seen as a kind of kin to Moonstruck.

Much of the coming and going and carrying on romantically takes place under cover of darkness. Characters gaze meditatively into the night sky. White curtains billow in the breeze. There's even a glimpse of a pale, full moon radiating enchantment on Hamtramck and Hala. And lyrical, hummable folk music underscores the sense of a lower middle-class fariytale.

First-time filmmaker Theresa Connelly, who grew up in Hamtramck, winningly captures the flavour and rhythms of this humble family rich in life and vitality.

Working with Canadian cinematographer Guy Dufaux, Connelly even managers to make virtues out of her constraints.

The low-budget movie was show entirely in Hamtramck in an area of a few blocks surrounding a cathedral, and master shots of the locale are repeated often. This repetition emphasizes the circumscribed life of Hala and her family, just as the small kitchen and confined shooting area reflects the close-knit but sometimes claustrophobic relationships.

As well Connelly and Dufaux treat us to some intriguing images: a red uniformed street hockey team skating around a corner and a girl in a white wedding dress running down and alley and across a field.

But while the first part of the film is rather beguiling, Polish Wedding falters as the story deepens and slides to its conclusion.

The narrative lacks some clarity. For example, but cutting away from scenes of sexual foreplay, Connelly leaves us unsure of the identity of the fellow who's the father of Hala's baby, though all the characters in the movie, including Hala seem to know.

The tension in the narrative derives not only from Hala's short-term and long-term predicament -- whether she'll get away with leading the church procession of the Virgin and then whether she'll get the guy to marry her -- but also from Jadzia's straying and Bolek's response.

Character and atmosphere seem to be Connelly's strong suits, as well as drawing strong performances from actors.

Olin is superb as the earthy, sensuous wife, mother, adulterous lover, office cleaner and self-described "queen."

To meet her lover, Jadzia dons a uniform, complete with sweeping cape and perky hat, and tells Bolek she's going to a Polish Ladies Auxiliary meeting. "I'd like to know what it is auxiliary to," grumbles Bolek.

Polish Wedding has been criticized on two counts for its portrayal of women -- for representing church-going Polish Catholic women as wonton and adulterous, and on the other hand, for suggesting that home, family, and motherhood are the ultimate achievement for women.

Connelly may be overdoing the Madonna/motherhood imagery, but it is the theme of her film, starting with the art work that accompanies the opening credits and includes both religious icons and secular representations of sensual women.

Toronto Star 1998

Polish Wedding

Claire Danes, Lena Olin, Gabriel Byrne

Poor Lena Olin. In this irritatingly whimsical romantic comedy, she vamps about in one of those oversexed earth-mother roles that actresses adore but which too often come off onscreen as overheated ham. Here she plays a sexy Polish cleaning woman who lives crammed into a duplex in Detroit with her five children and passive husband (Byrne), a baker. When not getting it on lasciviously with a businessman amidst the scouring brushes on the floor of the office lavatory she's cleaning, Olin is ardently declaring, "Making life and love, that's my religion." Her teenage daughter (Danes, who's pouty) has it worse, since she is slated to lead the local church's Festival of the Virgin parade but inconveniently finds herself pregnant.

Tyro director-writer Theresa Connelly clearly meant her movie to be wacky, heartfelt ethnic fun, like Moonstruck. It's not. (PG-13)

Bottom Line: RSVP yes at your own risk

-- LEAH ROZEN from PEOPLE WEEKLY

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Friday, July 17, 1998

There's no such thing as a quiet moment for the Pzoniak family of Hamtramck, Mich., whose combustible home life is the subject of "Polish Wedding" (Fox Searchlight). Hyper-dramatic matriarch Jadzia (Lena Olin) smolders even when she's in her bathrobe, vamping to her children at the breakfast table: She calls herself a queen, but by occupation she's an office cleaner. Silent patriarch Bolek (Gabriel Byrne), a baker, tunes out everything he doesn't like, including the fact that his wife is cheating on him. The four Pzoniak sons clang and bang their way around the house; rebellious daughter Hala (Claire Danes), who adores her father, doesn't imagine she's anything like her mother, but of course she is. She taunts young men with her wildness, and one day that wildness gets her in just the kind of trouble Jadzia courted years ago

. Inspired by her own roots in Hamtramck's Polish-American community, first-time writer-director Theresa Connelly aims for a European feel, perhaps a dusting of art-house confectioners' sugar on this ethnic "All in the Family" story. But these Pzoniaks don't come to life -- not like the Bunkers, not like the "Secrets & Lies" crew -- because Connelly has packed in too many high-concept personalities and overseasoned them with too much self-conscious spiciness. The operatic climax moves from blasphemy during a church rite to Jadzia and Bolek's rediscovery of their love in a small pantry lined floor to ceiling with jars of pickles. That's the problem with "Polish Wedding," the condiments crowd out the human beings.

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Polish Wedding

Starring Gabriel Byrne, Lena Olin. Written and directed by Theresa Connelly. Opens July 17.

Polish Wedding is yet another of those summer romances that show up in theatres a few weeks after the big summer blockbusters have finished puncturing the eardrums of millions of teenagers. And, as usual in these films, there is an exotic angle to the love story -- it's set in a Polish enclave in Detroit.

Although the Polish setting might seem like a major departure from the typical Mediterranean locales in summer romances like Belle Epoque, Barcelona, Stealing Beauty, Summer in La Goulette and For Roseanna, the impediments to young love are standard for the genre --interfering parents and old-fashioned religious values. Claire Danes plays a promiscuous young beauty who wants to boink as many men as her secretly adulterous mother (Lena Olin) does, but the Catholic church expects her to remain chaste until marriage, and has even chosen her to lead a holy parade of virgins. As luck would have it, she gets knocked up before the parade, and her outraged family wants to beat her boyfriend into a small, knish-shaped object.

Writer/director Theresa Connelly occasionally comes up with captivating images, as Danes leads her lovers on chases through hot summer nights or stomps defiantly through crowds of contemptuous townspeople. As well, most of the jokes and gags in the script are funny.

But there aren't nearly enough jokes to sustain the film as a successful comedy. And, unlike Belle Epoque or Summer in La Goulette, neither the carnal impulses nor the Catholic prohibitions seem especially overpowering -- the early shots of Claire Danes and Lena Olin seducing men are gradually phased out in favor of scenes of wholesome family bickering, and the supposedly tyrannical priest is about as threatening as Mr. Rogers.

-- TOM LYONS