The Wedding Guest  ★★★

WHENEVER Dev Patel is in a film I’m inclined to watch it.

Since his first appearance in 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, the British/Indian actor has proven himself versatile and gifted in a range of films including Chappie, Lion, The Man Who Knew Infinity and Hotel Mumbai.

He is also one of those actors who can transcend a script, adding layers to a character through the way he listens and thinks, as well as how he speaks.

This is again the case in English director Michael Winterbottom’s 2019 drama The Wedding Guest.

In Winterbottom, the idiosyncratic director of films like Welcome to Sarajevo, The Killer Inside Me and The Road to Guantanamo, Patel has a kindred spirit prepared to let a story unfold slowly and naturally and less reliant on dialogue.

In The Wedding Guest we are immediately intrigued.

For the first 15 minutes we follow Patel’s character, Jay, as he enters India via plane and rents two different cars during his journey. We see that he is intent on covering his tracks and watch him buy two handguns.

We can tell he has received some weapons training by the familiarity with which he handles them. Is he the wedding guest of the title? Is he a terrorist? Does he have a particular target?

If you’re familiar with Winterbottom’s approach to story-telling you will know things are never what they seem and never unfold in an obvious manner.

As we follow Jay and a woman, Samira (Radhika Apte), with whom he eventually travels, there is a sense that this is a spiritual as well as physical journey through the heart of the sub-continent, in particular Indian and Pakistan.

The relationship between the pair also becomes a focus of the film and the actors create an exceptional, quiet chemistry that helps maintain the film’s mystery.

Winterbottom and his cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, capture the sense of place beautifully; we can smell and taste the experience, the bustle of the streets and markets and constant movement and sounds of the population.

Jay’s story and journey is also a cautionary one, demonstrating the ease with which a beautiful and peaceful country can still be infiltrated and exposed to violence.

The pace and resolution of the film won’t please everyone but it looks beautiful and retains a strange tension throughout.