Synopsis

The search is on for the Most Original Wedding of the Year! Confetti Magazine owner Antoni Clarke, looking to boost the wedding magazines falling readership has come up with a brilliant idea. Confetti will give three of its readers the chance to live their dream by having the theme wedding they always wanted. Antoni and his Editor Vivien are initially enthusiastic and why not. First prize in the competition is a £500,000 dream home, the winning couples picture on the cover of the next issue and, finally, on the most important day of their lives, a dream wedding. But things go wrong when after a lengthy and tiresome interview process, one of the three couples, Michael and Joanna, out to be naturists. With professional wedding planners Heron and Hough ("your dreams are enough") on hand to turn the couples’ dreams into reality things are looking up. Themes are debated, colour schemes co-ordinated and dance routines rehearsed. Top hats, tennis balls and fig leaves are at the ready. Which lucky couple will scoop the prize? Will Vivien and Antoni regret their choice of finalists and rig the result? The big day is approaching fast. Who will win?

What The Critics Say

"Franklin and Watkins are absolutely hysterical as the gay couple that lives off the romance around them." Rich Cline SHADOW ON THE WALL "There are a number of good scenes, most of which involve Vincent Franklin and Jason Watkins as a pair of gay wedding planners. There are also valiant scene-stealing attempts by Alison Steadman and Sarah Hadland as Sam’s mother and a cruise ship entertainer sister respectively." Matthew Turner VIEW LONDON "When I learned that Confetti was a reality-based mockumentary about a wedding contest I cringed. You can imagine how relieved I was to enjoy it hugely. 4 STARS" Margaret Pomeranz ABC ATTHE MOVIES "...I'm sure there will be millions of people who will think it very funny." David Stratton ABC ATTHE MOVIES "The search for the most original wedding of the year results in Confetti, a lively mockumentary-style comedy that is as funny as it is spontaneous. Fresh and offbeat, Debbie Isitt's totally improvised film manages to keep it real enough to bring pathos, crazy enough to make it a hoot. It's the kind of film that Christopher Guest might have dabbled in." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE

"The premise may look like Four Weddings and Love Actually, but this film is really a Christopher Guest-style improvised mock-doc." Rich Cline SHADOWS ON THE WALL "The characters are well-drawn and superbly acted by the ensemble cast - Webb and Coleman prove particularly good sports by spending almost the entire film naked (and not in a good way)." Matthew Turner VIEWLONDON "To help each couple get ready -- and keep them on message with Confetti's image -- the mag hires camp-as-Christmas wedding planners Archie Heron and Gregory Hough (Vincent Franklin, Jason Watkins). Their sweet, loving relationship will endear pic to metro-sexual viewers." VARIETY "All credit to the performers, this film is a real homage to British talent. It’s such a sweet film, depicting the pain and the comedy of the process of getting married. And the pay-off at the end is terrific. So despite my misgivings, I’m a fan of this film. I had such a good time with it." Margaret Pomeranz ABC ATTHE MOVIES "Confetti is both a curse and a blessing to those looking to Britain for comedy film; get on board with it and you'll have a riot but fail to pick up on the experimental nature of its humour and you'll likely be lost." Joe Utichi FILM FOCUS UK

The Inside Story Mention the word mockumentary and the first name that springs to art-house filmgoers is Christopher Guest. Guest is a master at this style of production. Songwriter, screenwriter, director, stage and screen actor Guest has made the mockumentary his private domain. On the bigscreen, Guest first gained notice with the release in 1984 of the film, "This is Spinal Tap" which he not only appeared in but also wrote the screenplay for. It was a big year for Guest. On the eighteenth of December that year wed actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who had seen his photo in Rolling Stone magazine. His "This is Spinal Tap" character, heavy metal rocker Nigel Tufnel, would appear again in 1992 with the release of "The Return of Spinal Tap". Guest had found a niche product and his success continued when in 1996 "Waiting for Guffman", in which he appeared as high-strung choreographer Corky St Clair, was released to much critical acclaim. He co-wrote the screenplay with a man who has gone on to become a household name. Who was it? None other than Eugene Levy. It was a partnership that would reunite for "Best in Show" which many will remember for Guest's wonderful performance as Harland Pepper and Levy's for Gerald 'Gerry' Fleck. The film took the absolute piss out of championship dog shows. Characters in the film were perfectly matched to their show breeds mirroring how dog owners are seen in real life. The championship was televised and hosted by two TV commentators whose dialogue was nothing short of 'genius'. Guest and Levy returned in 2003 with the sensational mockumentary "A Mighty Wind", this time taking the piss out of the folk music industry. Centrepiece to the films story line was the 1960's folk group the 'Folksmen' but there was also a lot of focus on whether singing duo Mitch and Mickey would reunite for a concert performance. Those who saw the film will remember it was Eugene Levy who played Mitch Cohen, one half of that well known folksy team. Talk about laugh. I saw "A Mighty Wind" three times and people in the audience were laughing so much, many had tears streaming down their eyes. Then Guest announced it was the last time he'd make a mockumentary. Fans were shattered. Our world collapsed like a dying star. We were left with a black hole, a void we thought could never be filled. Until now! Once again the British have come to cinema fans rescue. Yes, those barmy brits have produced a delicious little piece which I think even Guest would approve of, "Confetti" a film which makes a mock of reality tv, the magazine industry and the big business of planned weddings. Directed and penned by Debbie Isitt who came up with the idea after he sisters wedding and subsequent honeymoon went a little haywire. "My sister had just got married and she'd spent an extortionate amount of money on her wedding. She was feeling really stressed about the whole thing.On the morning of the big day, she put some eye drops in her eyes to make them sparkle and during the course of the day, she went steadily blind. Her eyes swelled up and by the end of her wedding day, she couldn’t see a thing," Isitt recalls. But wait, it gets worse. "The next day, she and her husband were going on their honeymoon to Mexico and she had to take a stick with her," she says. "It was obviously an allergic reaction, but it made me realize there's something really hot about this getting married business." Her interest aroused, Isitt hit the internet. "I thought I'd do some research so I hit the internet and typed in 'weddings' and a whole new world opened up to me. I didn't get out of that world for about two years! I just completely fell in love with the whole industry, got on the chat rooms with all the brides and had such a good time. Out of that I wrote a synopsis for something about weddings which metamorphosed into CONFETTI. By the time I met the guys at Wasted Talent, I'd decided that I wanted to do something completely improvised. I thought that weddings and the wedding industry would be something we could do something fresh with and the rest, as they say, is history." Being a big fan of the "X-Factor" it didn't take long for her creative juices to stir up a caserole of tempting, tasty, ideas. Isitt says "it didn't take a huge leap of the imagination for me to wonder what it would be like if people competed for their weddings. Once I'd landed that concept, the most original wedding seemed the most delightful idea." The films storyline features three couples. A tennis coupe. A singing couple. A naturist couple. Where did they come from? "I’m not sure where the tennis players came from," she said. "I just thought there must be a couple of tennis players who want a Wimbledon-style wedding. I've always been interested in naturism and what it's all about, but most importantly, I think it's hilarious. Let’s face it, when you think about a naturist wedding, the first thing you do is laugh." And the third couple? "I think a musical wedding is probably my own secret dream wedding!", she offered. "Confetti" would prove to be a bit of a groundbreaker. Why? They improvised the whole lot. That presented problems when it came to casting the film. "We wanted to make sure the actors knew what they were letting themselves in for and wouldn't struggle," says Isitt. "We saw lots of people: some were brilliant actors but struggled without a script; other people were brilliant without a script but just weren’t right for these characters. In the end, I think we got just the right group." With so much improvisation, filming "Confetti" would mean finding the right camera crew. "We knew that we needed the crew to be as interested as the actors in the whole process because they were going to be following them constantly. We needed a very flexible, adaptable crew. We found a brilliant cameraman, Dewald Aukema who’s very experienced shooting on HD and has filmed a lot of documentaries. The people we gathered were very excited by this extraordinary thing that was about to happen. And they were all nervous about it, too!" In the end, they had 150 hours of rushes. It was a huge job for the films editor Nicky Ager and director Debbie Isitt who had to view every single hour. In fact Isitt and Ager, who are partners, spent a whole year editing the rushes. Having Ager for a partner was lucky for Isitt who revealled, "because if he wasn't someone who completely loved me, he would definitely have left me or killed me. It was such an obsessive undertaking! We edited it in our bedroom for over a year and hardly ever came up for air. There had to be love there, because nothing else would have survived it." Survive it they did and the end result is a wicked little piece that will provide a very satisfying experience for those who love a good mockumentary. Like Guest's films, "Confetti" is big on realism. They even went to a 'nudist' camp, where cast and crew worked without their clothes on. Don't believe me. "It was important to us that all of the locations were as real as possible because we were asking the actors to become their characters and live like them. We booked the tennis players into a dodgy hotel, and Sam and Matt moved into somebody's house. The naturists had to be in their natural environment so we contacted 'Spielplatz', a real naturist community in Hertfordshire. We had a wonderful workshop day there, where we all took our clothes off to help the actors get into character, " Isitt remembers. And how did she feel about that? "It was one of the most embarrassing things I've ever done, but I'm glad I did it." And here's another juicy bit of trivia about the tennis coach in the film. "Jesus [de Miguel] is a professional tennis coach we hired to help the actors improve their tennis skills. I turned up for one of their practice sections, took one look at him," Isitt says, "and thought, 'He's gorgeous'. He had this Colgate smile and this lovely accent. So I just walked up to him and said, 'Do you want to be in my film'?" He did! And here's a beaut story about those wedding sets used in the film. "Production designer, Chris Roope, had to work in close collaboration with our wedding planners, Heron and Hough. He didn't speak to Jason and Vincent as actors but in character, and the three of them designed what ultimately became the wedding sets together in workshops. For Chris to be prepared to work with actors in that way, to follow their lead and run with their ideas, was fantastic," Isbitt said. No doubt there will be comparisons with Guest's work but why bother. The Brits have their own way of doing things and "Confetti" is just another example of their ingenuity when it comes to filmmaking. The Verdict "The latest British comedy to hit the big-screen is in fact a 'mock'-umentary sending up reality TV shows, magazines and the wedding industry. There's a tennis couple. There's a singing couple. And then there's the naturist couple. All of whom provide ample opportunities for "Confetti" to garner laughs from. Consequently the laugh factor builds throughout the film. Like all good sendups there is plenty of good natured humour and many laugh out loud moments, most of which come when either the 'naturists' or Heron and Hough ("your dreams are enough") the gay wedding planners are onscreen. This really is worth having a look at. 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "CONFETTI" stars .......
Jimmy Carr ["Alien Autopsy" and "Stormbreaker"]; Vincent Franklin ["From Hell", "The Sound Of Silence" and "Vera Drake"]; Jason Watkins ["Tomorrow Never Dies", "Onegin" and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"]; Martin Freeman ["The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy", "Love Actually" and TV's "The Office"], Jessica Stevenson ["Spaced" and "The Royle Family"]; Alison Steadman ["Life is Sweet" and "Abigail’s Party"] and Felicity Montagu ["I'm Alan Partridge"] as Vivienne.
"CONFETTI" was .......
directed by Debbie Isitt ["Nasty Neighbours" and "Wasps"]; production design by Chris Roope ["Hold Back the Night", "Thunderpants" and "The Upside of Anger"]; costume design by Deirdre Clancy ["The Light at the Edge of the World", "Mrs Brown" and "Back to the Secret Garden"]; cinematography by Dewald Aukema ["Girls Apart" and "My Kingdom"]; edited by Nicky Ager ["Wasps", "Danny and His Amazing Teeth" and "Ice Cream Dream"] produced by an Benson ["The Weekend" and "The Misadventures of Margaret"] and Ian Flooks ["Confetti"]. Run Time 104 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2006 - Fox Searchlight Pictures - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2006 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved