Is anyone really ready to get married, let alone commit?
Tayarisha Poe’s new film, “The Young Wife,” asks and answers the age-old question and more, with Kiersey Clemons starring as a young woman whose “non-wedding” to her elusive partner (Leon Bridges) brings out all the pressures of a traditional union. The chaos and expectations of family and friends heighten the not-quite-bride’s spiraling panic, and all seems poised to unravel just before the party meant to celebrate their love.
Sheryl Lee Ralph, Judith Light, Kelly Marie Tran, Aya Cash, and Michaela Watkins co-star. Poe writes and directs her follow-up to 2019 Sundance debut “Selah and the Spades.”
“The Young Bride” premiered at SXSW 2023, where it was picked up by distributor Republic Pictures, a Paramount Pictures label. “I’m excited to share the work of our wonderful cast and crew,” Poe told IndieWire. “For me this is a story of color and chaos, tension and release — an antidote to a plague of loneliness, a tonic for being alive. so, simply put, it’s a wedding.”
Poe began writing the film in 2019 but after the pandemic hit, reoriented the feature to be set in the future since traditional weddings began to be virtual experiences. The production design by Rocio Gimenez and costumes by Laura Cristina Ortiz emphasize the slight futuristic feel of the feature.
In his review out of the festival, IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio wrote that the feature “evokes the beginning of Lars von Trier’s ‘Melancholia,’ a movie whose first half appears to have influenced Poe here as another bustling wedding day where a bride (or in “The Young Wife”s’ case a bride-adjacent) has a breakdown amid a cascading series of crises. Set 10 years in the future and imbued with an ineffably otherworldly glow that almost makes you feel like you’ve been planted on another planet, ‘The Young Wife’ is a heady soup of a wedding day ensemble dramedy, and one with plenty of spiky characters and admirable visuals to pluck from.”
Lattanzio especially applauded lead actress Clemons’ performance as being “a ray of warmth and wonder, a clear center of gravity amid a constantly shuffling ensemble of people” of the feature.
“The Young Wife” premieres on digital on Friday, May 31. Check out the film’s trailer below.
