Third Wedding

The Belgian film Troisièmes noces was shown in the U.S. with the translated title Third Wedding (2018). The movie was written and directed by David Lambert.

Bouli Lanners plays Martin, a 50-year-old gay man whose husband has just died. Rachel Mwanza portrays Tamara, an undocumented Congolese woman, who needs to be married so that she can stay in the country.

Martin needs money, and the money will be supplied if he goes through with this marriage of convenience. Tamara is very beautiful, but, because Martin is gay, he's not attracted to her. However, they must dutifully go through with the charade.

The substance of the movie is not whether or not they succeed in fooling the authorities. The substance is whether or not they can work our their differences enough to actually become husband and wife.

The movie had weak subplots about the person who supplies the money to Martin, and about the detectives whose job it is to spot phony weddings. Those subplots are just fillers.

However, the main plot about the possibility of a connection between two very different people is fascinating. Both protagonists are great actors, and they make you believe that they could be the people depicted in the film.

We saw this movie at Rochester's great Dryden Theatre at The George Eastman Museum. It was shown as part of ImageOut, the wonderful Rochester LGBT festival. (If you can't find it at a festival, it should work well on the small screen.)

The movie has an anemic 6.7 IMDb rating. I think it's much better than that.

This screening was the New York State premiere of the film. Thank you, ImageOut!

If you are interested in the storyline you won't be disappointed. Bouli Lanners is a wonderful actor who gives once again a strong and subtle performance in this simple but very effective movie. I agree with the comment above about the weak subplots but the characters are touching and the story is credible so I give a solid 8/10.