'After The Wedding' Trailer: Secrets, Mysteries, And Explosive Emotions

Sony Pictures Classics has released the first trailer for After the Wedding, director Bart Fruendlich's remake of Bird Box director Susanne Bier's 2006 movie of the same name. Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams lead the cast, playing two women who find themselves linked by a mysterious shared history and who must grapple with the revelations of that history during a particularly stressful time in both of their lives. Check it out below.

I've gotta give the marketing team props here, because this trailer does a good job of teasing the audience with hints and slivers of information without blowing all of the film's mysteries wide open. After the Wedding was one of the opening night films at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and although I didn't enjoy it, I can at least respect it as being one of those mid-budget dramas aimed squarely at adults that the industry always laments falling by the wayside in the streaming era.

Williams and Moore are like hoses stepped on by kids on a hot summer day in this movie, holding back emotions until they're unleashed in powerful bursts. They're both exceptionally talented actresses and they each have a few strong moments here, but the artificiality of their performances held me back from connecting to their characters the way the movie demands. But hey, at least Billy Crudup is solid as Moore's character's husband. Here's a quick excerpt from my review:

One positive, though, is Billy Crudup's supporting performance as Oscar, Grace's father. He's introduced in an arresting shot in an art gallery, his face framed by a swirling metallic piece that struck me as a nice representation of his character: no straight lines and full of curves, like the path his life took when he made one fateful decision all those years ago. Crudup has been consistently great and sadly underused in Hollywood for the past decade, and his take on Oscar – a goofy but charismatic dad who can quickly flip from a smirk into an unending well of sadness – is one of the film's few highlights.

Here's the film's official synopsis:

Isabel (Michelle Williams) has dedicated her life to working with the children in an orphanage in Calcutta. Theresa (Julianne Moore) is the multimillionaire head of a media company who lives with her artist husband (Billy Crudup) and their twin boys in New York. When word comes to Isabel of a mysterious and generous grant for the financially struggling orphanage, she must travel to New York to meet the benefactor—Theresa—in person.

After the Wedding arrives in theaters in Los Angeles and New York on August 9, 2019, and will presumably roll out to wider audiences shortly after that.