"Do Us Part" - A Movie That Reminds Us Why We Like Indies

“Is Julia perfect?” This question is asked by Mark, played by writer, director, and leading man Reed Arnold, to his friend Ryan at one of the climatic moments of the film.

“No,” answers Ryan, played by Travis Laughlin. They’re talking about Ryan’s fiance, the woman he is set to marry in only a few minutes. Mark asks Ryan once more and again is told that she is not perfect. After a pause, Mark asks if Ryan would have said Rose was perfect. Rose is the beautiful idealized love, played by Kelly Russo, from Ryan’s past. She’s come to Ryan’s wedding to tell him she’s in love with him. When Ryan doesn’t answer Mark, Mark says that while he believes Ryan loved her, he idealized her. And implies that that prevents someone from truly loving someone in the most authentic way (I’m paraphrasing).

“You don’t need a fantasy,” he says, “you have reality.”

It’s exactly the type of satisfying scene that you want to tie a movie like this together. It’s simple. It's beautiful. And it’s apt because that’s exactly how I feel about this movie. It’s not perfect, but that’s fine. I have reality. And the reality is that this is a good movie.

It starts with a basic premise. There’s a girl in love with a guy who is about to marry someone else. If you want to pitch a movie night for your significant other, there’s an easy pitch they’ll recognize. We’ve seen it before but that's because it works and because it happens. Moreover, the complexities of a situation like that are fertile fields from which a writer may grow a hundred different stories in a hundred different ways. Often those ways are hackneyed. Someone runs off into the sunset and someone gets left at the altar. The person at the altar looks comically nonplussed before lashing out angrily to show that he/she was never the right match to begin with.

This movie did not go that direction. Mark that down as one of the first things I liked about it.

In addition to this basic premise, it had the classic trope of two foil characters. Ryan and Mark. Ryan is the husband committing to a woman for life, Mark is the best man who talks about the “five Stephanies” he has in his phone. The movie leans a little hard on these tropes for cheap laughs every now and then but is otherwise well- executed. After Mark’s fifth comment about a woman who squirts during orgasm being called ‘Old Faithful’, wanting to lick Gal Gadot's abs, or him asking if Ryan wants Scarlett Johansson to diddle his nutcask, you find yourself wanting to say “yeah, we get it.” But the classic trope works.

This all sets a very clear stage upon which Rose may now enter. Over a series of insert shots showing Rose’s mix of both determination and extreme apprehension, she finally fully arrives on screen. She is aware that what she is doing is wrong. She is apologetic, but she is determined nonetheless. The artistic way in which her slow debut was shot is beautiful, understated, and exactly what the doctor ordered to introduce the wedding crasher as a sympathetic character. Through Kelly Russo’s down to earth performance, Arnold’s compassionate writing, and the aforementioned cinematography, Rose proves to be as kind and as selfless as a woman crashing a wedding to take the groom away can be. 

Something else that helped the audience take Rose’s side, but was less laudable, was the absence of the bride-to-be. For the bride that Ryan says he knows better than anyone who is juxtaposed to an idealized love from his past, we see very little of Julia. That’s good that he knows her better than anyone, because we sure don’t. We see her once. And when we do, she is unrealistically calm, speaks in a slightly stilted way, and is almost ethereally pragmatic. Because of this- and this is a spoiler- when Mark blurts out that he is in love with Julia, the moment feels wholly unearned. We haven’t seen Julia on-screen or even heard that Mark liked her beyond him introducing her to Ryan. There's several moments in the film that feel like important character and relationship building events were rushed so that we could tuck into the big moments you expect from an indie comedy-romance.

But when you get to those big moments, you get why writer/ director Reed Arnold was eager to get there. These scenes were clearly written by a man who has something to say about the nature of love and friendship. The three characters in these big moments are kind, likeable, and self aware. They're sometimes driven by less than noble motivations and admit to less than savory pasts, but their current selves are aware of who they are and are as magnanimous and as understanding of the feelings of the two other friends as they can be. Reed Arnold’s Mark leads the charge in this arena. At times he embodies the “wise fool” and delivers knowledge in speeches that could hold their own against many of our favorite romantic indie film monologues. Other times he's funny and quick-witted, his style highlighted by quick cuts and astute tight shots that are meant for romantic comedies like this. In many ways, this story is more about Mark than it is the bride, the groom, or the wedding crasher and Reed Arnold confidently steps up to bat. This movie often seems unsure who it's focusing on and whose perspective it's from, and while that may be a shortcoming, the result is that you can pick for yourself. I, clearly, picked Mark and I was not disappointed.

This film misses on some jokes, at times it lacks subtlety, and some moments are unearned, but for anyone who loves indie comedy/ romances, do not let this scare you away. It’s well-shot, well-directed and set against the backdrop of a picturesque east coast wedding venue and a beautiful east coast college that, while it is the University of Virginia, could be any idyllic campus in the Virginia mountains. I'll admit, on that point, as a graduate of Roanoke College which lies only an hour and a half south of the University of Virginia, the setting definitely biased me towards a feeling of nostalgia. The acting is mostly good and entirely likeable. And that big moment where someone rides off into the sunset with the perfect person and some terribly imperfect person is left behind? Well, I don’t mind spoiling it for you, that doesn’t happen. The resolution is more nuanced than that. It’s “reality”. With a simple premise, using the recognized tropes, shot in a small mountain town, this movie does what good films in this genre do. It finds a couple nuggets of truth. It finds gems in the familiar. They’re not big or profound. But they’re beautiful. This is a good story. And it's exactly the type of story that reminds us why we like indies.

Verdict 7.8/10

You should watch.