Promesse d'Amour

Things I liked about The Wedding:

Halle Berry - fresh, beautiful, talented, what a lovely smile... the environment, the sets, the costumes (colors, styles, characterization), the lights and the colors of the scenes... the pear, the shore line, the woods, Marta's Vineyard sure must be a beautiful place. The beautiful white houses, the make-up displayed, the hairdos, the lines, the fact that it doesn't show violence, the fact that it deals with individual choice and the effect our choices have in others life. It suites the purpose of a TV movie, it has a message, it is clean, and healthy subject to watch and to think about. It's nice.

I read the reviews of this movie and I am shocked and appalled that so many people found this a worthwhile production. While, it is true that the movie is an accurate portrayal of upper class black socialites in the 1930s-1950s, there are so many elements of this movie and the book on which it was based that I found offensive.

First of all, let me set the record straight for all those who do not know. This movie was based on "The Wedding," a book by the renowned Harlem Rennaissance writer Dorothy West. It is NOT based on a true story in any way, shape or form.

I have read other works by Dorothy West and found them to be very interesting. She set herself apart from the other Harlem Rennaissance writers at the time by writing about black upper middle-class, a social hierarchy that has gone virtually unexplored throughout African-American Literature. However, when I read "The Wedding," I was deeply resentful. The underlying tone of racism against interracial relationships staggers me, as I am a multiracial person. I found the characters detestable and the fact that there is virtually no plot progression throughout the novel is a huge problem. Ninety percent of the novel is backstory.

Many of these same elements are portrayed in the movie version of this book to the nth degree. First of all, Shelby Coles is supposed to be white. She is not light-skinned like Halle Berry. She is WHITE. She has blond hair and blue-eyes. She is the product of so many blends of black and white that her blackness has been genetically wiped out on the surface. The fact that they cast Halle Berry to play Shelby Coles destroys the only redeeming quality I found in the book. This is the scene where Shelby gets lost as a little girl and no one can find her because the police report says that she is black, but she looks white. Using this scene to establish the unequal treatment society puts on whites and blacks was the only redeeming quality I found in this book.

There are several other elements that I found so offensive from this movie (mostly character-wise) that it would be impossible to mention them all.

This is a deeply resentful movie about interracial relations, and should not have been made into a movie. This was the last book that Dorothy West wrote before she died, and I'm wondering if that has something to do with its irregular quality. All I know is that if you are multiracial or biracial, do not, under any circumstances, watch this movie or read West's book. Read some of the other books by West. They are so much better.

There are so many things wrong with this movie (if you have read the book), that i don't know where to begin: First let me say that Halle Berry was great as Shelby. But she was more physically suited to play Liz...

Again, if you read the book, you see that Shelby's hair is blonde, and her eyes are blue, and her skin is very fair. There was a flashback (in the book) to when she got lost as a little girl. She was lost for so long because no one knew to look for her specifically-they were expecting to find a child with traditionally black features.

With regard to Lute McNeil: Dorothy West paints a picture of a man who, because of his upbringing, generally hates women (ironically, not his daughters, though); he sees them as possessions and breeders, and moves on when the next lady strikes his fancy. If he stuck to his pattern, Shelby would have gone the way of the all the other women. In the end, I think she saw that. The movie painted him far too sympathetically-you wanted to cheer for him as Shelby's salvation. But Lute was a dangerous man.

The chemistry between Meade and Shelby on screen was sooooooooooo weak-thus making Lute that much more attractive. That's not the way West meant it. And why the screenwriters chose to change his name from Wyler (in the book) to Howell (In the movie) made no sense to me.

And in the book, the little girl died from her injuries after being struck by the car. Hearing Gram say at the end "oh thank heavens, that little girl is gonna be alright" was just plain cheesy.

This was one of the most beautifully written books this century, and as much as I love Oprah, I found her vision of it for TV completely out of step with the spirit of what Dorothy West wrote. If you can, you owe it to yourself to get a copy of West's final masterpiece.

Many wonderful minutes of beautiful Halle Berry in tight mauve or peach pants and white tops. Warm, charming, and a joy to see.

THE WEDDING explores the times and trials of a clan of some of the more elite upper-class African Americans living in the eastern USA in the early 1950's. There are more family conflicts than a viewer can shake a stick at. however, the pacing is slow and the background music reeks of pure "Made-for-TV" sad to say.

More troubling, the production is rife with needless and unexplained flaws. One is that all through the movie it is repeatedly well established that a lighter skin complexion is very highly desired and negro features are less revered. When one daughter marries a darker black man, although he is a medical doctor and a good man, many in daughter's family reject the husband-to-be only because of skin complexion. OK, fine.

But there is logical difficulty because a "very handsome" black man, apparently single and available, moves in next door to the wedding house. The same family and neighborhood elders who uniformly scorn the black doctor are seen admiring the new neighbor. The unexplained problem is that the new neighbor is by far the darkest skinned man with the most negro features in the whole cast. The fact that this man is darker and more African looking than others is completely ignored throughout the script as if the director mis-cast the part of the neighbor and hoped viewers would be too dumb to notice.

Another sign of a weak script is found in the scene where the white fiance announces bad news about his parents expected arrival for the wedding. The scene was simply unrealistic. In real life, mature adults have an idea about how to break bad news with SOME tact. What was said and the way it was said was overly and needlessly blunt, awkward and ill-timed.

Ending at the beginning, watching Halle Berry was the best part of the movie for me.

Overall, I thought this was a self-indulgent, long-winded film. I didn't read the book and was fascinated to read how different it was. Still predictable is the glorification of "poor" and rich or accomplished as somehow suspect. All of these are the same kind of stereotypes as the film attempts to criticize.

There are certainly some good moments but most of the time, I forced myself to watch so I could finally see how it ended. I'm sorry to say, it wasn't worth the wait. The best part of the film is of course the gorgeous Halle Berry, who doesn't have to do much to be spectacular, and the portrayal of upper class black society. That was as much a revelation as Spielberg's film in which we learned the little known fact that slavery was begun in Africa and there were Black free men in the North during slavery--something of which many people are completely unaware.

Additionally, I don't see bias towards interracial marriage here. I see bias against building enough character development to have us care about the people.