My Mother’s Wedding (dir. Kristin Scott Thomas)

by Jack Martin | May 31, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 95 mins

UK Distributor: Universal Pictures

UK Release Date: 29 May 2026

WHO’S IN MY MOTHER’S WEDDING?

Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, Emily Beecham, Kristin Scott Thomas, Freida Pinto, Thibault de Montalembert, Joshua McGuire, Mark Stanley, Samson Kayo, James Fleet, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Ian Dunnett Jnr

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Kristin Scott Thomas (director, writer), John Micklethwait (writer), Finola Dwyer and Steven Rales (producers), Rolfe Kent (composer), Yves Bélanger (cinematographer), Joan Sobel (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Three sisters (Johansson, Miller and Beecham) reunite for the third wedding of their mother (Thomas)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MY MOTHER’S WEDDING?

It’s not until the final moments of director and co-writer Kristin Scott Thomas’s debut feature My Mother’s Wedding that it finally, after an entire movie of uncertainty, reveals what it’s all about. As it turns out, the film has an extremely personal angle that not only makes it very loosely semi-autobiographical, but also gives deeper emotional meaning to everything we have just witnessed, especially when you angle it from the perspective of its actor-turned-filmmaker who clearly crafted this movie with good intentions and even greater desire to convey her tragic experiences.

The thing is, by that point in the movie, the viewer is so far from caring that such a revelation barely even matters. That’s because My Mother’s Wedding is an absolute mess of a movie, one that is filled to the brim with strange filmmaking choices, low-stakes plotting, paper-thin characterisation, and almost no indication of what it’s actively trying to do with itself. No amount of goodwill behind the camera or the screenplay can make up for the fact that it is quite a heartbreaking failure for KST (as I’m calling her from here on), who again had the seeds for a compelling drama but completely fumbles it in the execution.

We open with sisters Katherine (Scarlett Johansson, frightfully miscast), Victoria (Sienna Miller, stuck on cartoonishly vapid mode) and Georgina (Emily Beecham, doing so much with so little), all seen as well as told via on-screen captions to be living very different lives – Katherine is a top-ranking naval officer, Victoria is a world-famous actor, and Georgina is an NHS nurse – making final preparations to visit their mother Diana (KST) for her imminent wedding to a nice yet slightly dull man named Geoff (James Fleet, his casting being a neat nod to fans of Four Weddings and a Funeral, also with KST). He would be Diana’s third husband, after her previous two coincidentally died in combat at different times, the first fathering both Katherine and Victoria and the second planting the seed that would become Georgina before their separate demises. The sisters all still have a strong emotional connection to their fathers, especially Katherine whose memories are so profound that they’re represented via strange hand-drawn flashback sequences which almost make it look as though they simply animated the storyboards rather than actually shoot the scenes. That, among quite a few other things, threaten to derail the celebrations.

On paper, it seems we have the basis for a light but no less heartfelt family drama with heavy themes of grief. But in execution, director KST almost immediately invites chaos as she struggles to land on a particular focal point, not helped by some extremely choppy editing where shots don’t seem to last more than two seconds and therefore make things surprisingly hard to visually make out. Hers and John Micklethwait’s script also layers itself with awkward exposition dialogue intended to set up certain sub-plots and side-characters, but you’re still left woefully unprepared when it will just start conjuring new people out of thin air, some of whom have backstories and personal relationships with the main trio that only become apparent through said dialogue and almost no visual establishment. That lack of storytelling clarity hurts the film immensely, as it keeps darting from one thing to another without providing some firm connective tissue to make it palatable for the viewer, who’s left utterly confused as to what’s going on and on whom we should be paying the most attention.

Although, it’s not too hard to get lost within the massively convoluted narrative where somehow everything seems to be happening and yet nothing at all. The stakes have never been lower, with the biggest source of immediate conflict coming from a drunk teenager being stuck up a not-very-tall tree; other than that, the wedding of the title – which takes place about half an hour in – goes off without a hitch (except for the actual hitched couple, of course), while the other issues that these sisters face are either mildly consequential or not even worth mentioning. KST and Micklethwait provide no substantial dimension to their characters, with even the former’s way too noticeably angelic titular mother having little else going for her other than her slightly interesting marriage history, so any of their late developments fall utterly flat, since again there’s not been any reason up to that point to be invested in any of them, or their seemingly poignant issues. Credit to KST, however, for capturing that feeling of being a guest at a wedding where you know or care about absolutely none of the other people, not even the seemingly happy couple.

As a director, KST proves lacklustre at building momentum, setting an appropriate tone, or even providing a clear focal point for her story. Its sense of narrative focus is so all over the place that for most of its third act it suddenly becomes An Officer and a Gentleman, right around when the film should at the very least start wrapping up, instead of mercilessly carrying things on for at least another fifteen minutes for no real reason. There’s also something a little vain about it all, because she and her character are constantly treated as though they’re completely infallible, not to mention she gets to give the film’s most impactful monologue (in a graveyard, of all places) while also constantly looking divine whilst surrounded by admittedly pristine countryside imagery. I wouldn’t exactly call it a vanity project, but it comes awfully close to being one at times.

But even still, My Mother’s Wedding is a heartbreaking failure for KST, for its themes and plot points are clearly very personal to her yet she cannot mix them together well enough to make a compelling or coherent feature in its own right.

SO, TO SUM UP…

My Mother’s Wedding is an unfortunate and even heartbreaking failure for first-time filmmaker Kristin Scott Thomas, who clearly has personal ties to this narrative but is unable to put all the right pieces together to make something coherent or compelling.