The Young Wife is in the tradition of Uncut Gems, Shiva Baby, and the Christmas flashback episode of The Bear. All are shows or movies that follow a protagonist as they spend a claustrophobic day around an overbearing family. Like in those films, the jittery cinematography and musical choices add to the paranoia. Those stories also tend to have endings that involve horrifying violence, a loud argument, or a car crashing into a house.
But Tayarisha Poe, a young filmmaker with a unique cinematic voice, finds a new way to tell this story with The Young Wife—one that, unlike all the others, lands on a note of optimism and joy. As it combines a wedding with surreal hints, at the margins, of climate catastrophe and other potential destructive events, The Young Wife has been compared to Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia. But unlike that film, it doesn’t conclude with the world’s demise.
Poe’s from Philadelphia whose debut film was 2019’s Selah and the Spades, a story of intrigue between rival factions at a Pennsylvania prep scale. The Young Wife, which premiered at South by Southwest a year ago, lands in theaters this week. It’s the equal of its predecessor and as well-acted and stylish, thanks in part to the dazzling work of cinematographer Jomo Fray, who also shot Selah and the Spades. Blue is the dominant color in the palette, conveying claustrophobia and joy at different times.
The film’s set entirely in one day, marking the small, non-traditional wedding party of Celestina (Kiersey Clemons), who’s marrying her longtime boyfriend, River (Leon Bridges), at her family’s home. She’s also quit her job in finance due to a crisis of conscience. But everywhere she goes, there’s another friend or relative eager to voice their disapproval of one or both of those life choices.
Clemons has been outstanding in many movies, like Dope and Hearts Beat Loud, and she does some of her best work here as a woman still trying to figure things out in her mid-20s amid a world that expects her to have it together already. She’s aided by a strong supporting cast. Jon Rudnitsky, a comedian who was briefly on Saturday Night Live, has a fantastic small role as an asshole party guest; while Clemons’ character has qualms about working in the finance world, he has no such qualms.
Sheryl Lee Ralph, who has collected awards for Abbott Elementary, is Clemons’ disapproving mother, while Judith Light, with half-purple hair, has some great scenes as the groom’s grandmother. The Last Jedi’s Kelly Marie Tran, sitcom veteran Michaela Watkins, and You’re the Worst’s Aya Cash are all too-little-seen faces who also show up; I’ll never understand why Cash never got any run as a movie star.