Les Noces Rebelles on Arte: by the great Sam Mendes, with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio
A subtle drama in the intimacy of a middle-class American couple.
In 2008, 11 years later TitanicKate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio met on screen in The Rebel Wedding. Broadcast this Sunday evening on Arte, this adaptation of a novel by David Yates by Sam Mendes (married at the time to Winslet) had won over First when it was released in the cinema. Our review:
In American BeautySam Mendes had already dissected US residential despair. Ten years later, The Rebel Wedding teleports a similar problem into America in the 1950s – the nightmare of the periphery, of being locked into a straitjacket of prefabricated happiness delivered turnkey but without instructions where one leaves one’s ambition and aspirations on the sidewalk at the same time as one takes out the trash on Friday evening.
In full possession of increasingly imposing means, Mendes raises the crescendo of resentment between characters bent by fate. DiCaprio and Winslet play them with their usual power, surrounded by supporting roles emerging like snipers to further sift through their wavering ideals (big mention to Michael Shannon, whose two appearances are petrifying). From the photography to the artistic direction to Thomas Newman’s insane score, everyone understood that we were practicing here a cinema that aims very high. Weddings to celebrate.
