By Dov Kornits
Experienced Aussie director Daniel Reisinger makes an auspicious feature film debut with the bittersweet rom-com And Mrs.
“Up until now, I’ve been working in TV and waiting for that one script that really sings and talks to me, and this was the one,” Daniel Reisinger tells FilmInk.
The film to draw Reisinger away from his busy “day job” directing commercials, episodic TV and music videos was the intriguingly titled And Mrs. The film’s plot is just as intriguing as its title, as a reticent bride-to-be’s fiancée tragically passes away before they can make it down the aisle. That would sadly be the end of that, right? Wrong! Said bride wants the marriage to go ahead, invoking a 200-year-old law written at the time of The Napoleonic Wars that actually allows women to marry dead partners, a law passed in a time of war so men who died in battle could still be betrothed by their surviving partners. And if you think that sounds like a decidedly not-very-Australian-sounding film, then you’d be right.
Though an Aussie, Daniel Reisinger has worked extensively overseas, and his debut feature is very much a British production, with gifted Irish comedienne and actress Aisling Bea a delight in the role of determined bride Gemma, with rock-solid and very entertaining support coming from Brit players like Susan Wokoma, Sinead Cusack, and American drop-ins Tom Hanks (as the flashbacked and occasionally ghostly fiancee) and Billie Lourd. Despite its very British bent, And Mrs has a decidedly Australian flavour, with screenwriter Melissa Bubnic also hailing from Down Under. “Look, the Aussie Mafia is very strong in LA famously, and there’s always a writer coming to LA that you have to have brunch with,” laughs Reisinger of his first meeting with Bubnic, which was set up by British producer and mutual friend Dan Hine. “But Melissa turned up with a bottle of Prosecco and we proceeded to get fairly trolleyed at 10:00am and just had a wonderful time. And as she was leaving, she said to me, ‘Hey, would you read my feature script?’ I rather patronisingly was like, ‘Oh, I’ll do you a favour. I’ll read your feature script and give you some notes’.”
Though initially underwhelmed by what appeared to be a fresh but fairly standard rom-com, Reisinger’s eyebrows raised considerably when he hit page five, upon which the apparent romantic lead dies. “I was like, ‘What in God’s name? What just happened?’” Reisinger explains. “And I stayed up basically half the night reading it, and I laughed my arse off and cried my guts out. I’d been wanting to [feel that kind of emotion]. It came to me at a special moment in my life. Like a lot of good Aussie boys, I’d always been taught to take a teaspoon of cement and harden up. I hadn’t really cried in the best part of twenty years, but something had just happened to me just before this. My mum had called me one day in absolute pieces saying she was scared because she’d been diagnosed with a rare form of dementia called FTD, which is fatal and ultimately was for mum. It’s what Bruce Willis has. Melissa’s script cracked something open inside me. My life’s mission is still to make the world a better place through comedy, which I know sounds insanely pretentious, but all of a sudden, I also wanted to do stuff that was a bit more emotional and a little bit weightier.”
After a little wrangling and dealing, Reisinger was installed as director on the film, and set out to hit his aim of healing through cinema. To achieve this, however, Reisinger (who had just enjoyed some success with the US TV series Sideswiped) felt that he needed to go against the grain of what he was currently seeing on screens. “What I love about the film is that it’s a very obvious way to tackle grief and dying, told through a very grounded kind of comedic storytelling,” Reisinger explains. “My show, Sideswiped, is very grounded, but I just thought it’d be more interesting to bring back an older tone that has been out of vogue for a little while. Everyone was zigging. I thought, ‘Why don’t we zag?’ My touchstone was Muriel’s Wedding, which just turned 30 years old this year. I freaking love Muriel’s Wedding. With comedy, you need all the different shades. But I keep seeing super grounded stuff…not going too broad is what’s in. But I just love Muriel’s Wedding. I mean, you go from Toni Collette laughing hysterically at seeing her first willy to, boom, Rachel Griffiths collapses and is paralysed. That tonal variation was an interesting challenge and it was inherent in the script and was something that was important to [producer] Dan Hine. And ultimately, it was important to me too.”
The film’s front-on approach to the dark and often very difficult subject of grief has also allowed Reisinger to make meaningful moves with regards to the release of the film. “One of the most gratifying things about having just travelled the world with the film is that we partnered with grief charities in all the markets we’ve been releasing it in,” the director explains. “It’s been extraordinary seeing people who have got really full-on stories about grief, just connecting with the film. At the London Premiere, we partnered with an organisation called Good Grief, and there was this woman sitting in front of me and she just laughed. She and her mate laughed louder than anyone else and sobbed harder than anyone else. And at the end, she stood up to share her story, that she’d lost her partner four months earlier. And another woman, Charlene, stood up and told the story about how her partner was terminally ill, and she chose to marry him two weeks before he died. It’s been absolutely extraordinary.”
And while Melissa Bubnic’s script was totally on-point, Reisinger found himself layering in aspects of his own grief, as well as some of the experiences and emotions of his cast and crew. “I wish I could say we had some incredible master plan about only hiring actors who had a connection with grief, but it just happened that way,” Reisinger says. “And then afterwards, we were like, ‘Oh, my God…. that’s why they all said yes’. Aisling Bea has talked so eloquently in The Guardian about losing her father at the age of three, and how it shaped her and made her. And she’s just the best bloody actress I’ve ever worked with. She’s just so dramatically powerful and insanely intelligent and funny. Billie Lourde famously lost her mother, Carrie Fisher, and her grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, within 48 hours of each other. Carrie died of a drug overdose and then Debbie died of a heart attack two days later because of the grief. And Colin Hanks actually lost his mother while he was quite young. It went right through the cast.”
A winningly funny, bold and engaging film, And Mrs is also a profoundly meaningful one. “I just wanted to make a movie for punters where we say to people, ‘grief really sucks’,” Reisinger says. “It’s awful, but it’s a part of life. Hopefully, this film puts its arm around your shoulder and says, ‘It’s okay to laugh about it’, which is kind of taboo in Australia. And ultimately, I hope that the film talks to the fact that grief is weird, and it’s idiosyncratic. Everyone has their own way of grieving and that’s fine… you should be allowed to grieve however the hell you want, even it means marrying someone who’s dead.”
And Mrs is screening as part of The British Film Festival. Click here for session times and cinema locations.
