Des­ti­na­tion Wedding

The first time Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder worked togeth­er, it was on Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s goth­ic opus Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la. Reeves was wide­ly derid­ed as the worst thing about the film, and has been cit­ed on just about every ​‘Roles that Were Mis­cast’ list since 1992. Four­teen years lat­er came Richard Linklater’s ani­mat­ed Philip K Dick adap­ta­tion A Scan­ner Dark­ly, and now, a full 26 years since their first on-screen cou­pling, we have done pre­cise­ly noth­ing to deserve wit­ness­ing their odd­ball chem­istry in Vic­tor Levin’s quirky two-han­der Des­ti­na­tion Wed­ding.

It feels like per­fect cast­ing – Frank (Reeves) is a morose, stub­born, often out­right rude sort who con­stant­ly clears his throat, and Lind­say (Ryder) is a fast-talk­ing, neu­rot­ic night­mare who grows pro­gres­sive­ly more ani­mat­ed the more incensed she is by Frank’s odi­ous­ness. Reeves and Ryder have a ball play­ing so wild­ly against type, as their char­ac­ters meet at an air­port and imme­di­ate­ly despise each other.

Things go from bad to worse when they realise they are both attend­ing nup­tials in Cal­i­for­nia wine coun­try: Lind­say is the groom’s ex, and Frank the groom’s estranged broth­er. Nei­ther of them want to be there, but forced togeth­er by prox­im­i­ty and dis­like for every oth­er human being, they devel­op a strange sort of sense of camaraderie.

Vic­tor Levin’s film is that it relies sole­ly on Ryder and Reeves – they are the only two char­ac­ters with any dia­logue, which gives it a screw­ball sort of ener­gy where­by we only see the wed­ding from the per­spec­tive of two peo­ple who do not want to be there. Giv­en that Winona and Keanu are old pals, they have an easy chem­istry togeth­er, even play­ing such utter­ly repug­nant char­ac­ters. There’s some­thing com­pelling about them despite their glar­ing faults, as they share their emo­tion­al bag­gage over copi­ous amounts of red wine and knock-off Toblerones. They’re cer­ti­fied weirdos, sure, but weirdos need love too.

It’s an unglossed por­trait of romance, even down to a cringe-induced, drawn-out sex scene which runs the gamut of human emo­tion from fear and embar­rass­ment to amuse­ment and under­stand­ing. Undoubt­ed­ly Des­ti­na­tion Wed­ding wouldn’t work at all with­out the curi­ous mag­net­ism of Winona and Keanu at is core, and some of the gen­der pol­i­tics which come out in the script feel weird­ly dat­ed for 2019. Even so, it’s a charm­ing enough trip for its svelte 85-minute run­time, and like Punch-Drunk Love did so beau­ti­ful­ly back in 2002, it sug­gests there’s some­one for you, as strange as you are.