For anyone wondering why Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves have never been paired romantically in a contemporarily set and non-animated film before, wonder no more: we have Destination Wedding. Directed and written by Victor Levin (best known for spanning the TV realm in shows ranging from Mad About You to Mad Men), the play-like badinage between our two misanthropes, Frank (Reeves) and Lindsay (Ryder), essentially commences from the moment the two encounter one another at what one assumes is John Wayne Airport (to arrive in San Luis Obispo, a county regional airport, mind you), where both await the type of plane that looks built for two and will eventually take them to the Paso Robles milieu where both are expected to attend a wedding (hence the straightforward title).
Yet before their adversarial comportment toward one another, there is a sense of attraction and pleasantness between them when Frank sizes up the area, approaches her and compliments her dress. We soon realize it was a play at honing in on the weakest link to cut in front of, leading Lindsay to wish that she had never returned his compliment or even for a second believed in his charm, deriding, “You are part and parcel of a world that no longer has any idea how to behave itself. In fact, I draw a straight line between people like you to investment bankers to politicians to terrorists. You basically all have the same contempt for decency and rules and any manners.”
Needless to say, it sets the tone for their weekend spent essentially continuing this back and forth with no one else to talk to. And if the pedantic-sounding verbosity of the dialogue sounds familiar, it’s no doubt because it could just as easily have been ripped from the pages of a Woody Allen screenplay (particularly in recent years when the auteur has absolutely no holds barred on trying to re-appeal his Annie Hall stylings to millennials gagging for that type of “reboot”–that is, if they didn’t deem him a sexual predator). Over the course of the narrative, however, it starts to harken back to another love story borne out of being too “pathetic” (a.k.a. hateful) for this world: American Splendor. Based on the comics of Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti), therefore his life (for an ultra meta biopic), much of the film centers on how he came to be with political comic writer Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis). For it was she who reached out to him asking for a copy of American Splendor #6 when the last one had been bought at her local comic book store. This postcard set off a chain of correspondences that spoke to Pekar’s voiceover, “My loneliness was unbearable, man. Weekends were the worst. Sometimes in my sleep, I’d feel a body next to me like an amputee feels a phantom limb.” The desire for someone at least even remotely like-minded (or, at the bare minimum, someone who despises the same things) was so overwhelming that there’s no doubt this is what contributed to the two marrying the day after they met in person.
For Frank and Lindsay, though the former would be the most hard-pressed to admit it, this is the exact sentiment that washes over each of them as they seem to be the only two people at the wedding with any sense of how utterly awful it is, how narcissistic, to boot, that a couple should expect their guests not only to travel and spend extra money for a wedding, but to be forced to commit an entire weekend instead of a single day to it. That the groom, Keith, also happens to be Lindsay’s ex-fiancé and Frank’s half-brother only adds to the forcing hand of destiny that seems to bring them together. But Lindsay is grudging toward this notion, asking Frank as they’re seated at an empty round table together for the rehearsal dinner, “So we’re just the people you don’t know where to stick?” He affirms, “So you might as well stick us together.”
Lindsay refuses to sink to Frank’s level of cynicism for she is still wounded and in love with Keith, only choosing to come to the wedding to somehow prove she’s the bigger person in their relationship fallout (he left her five weeks before their own wedding). This prompts her to demand of Frank, “How can this be the way this species is set up? How can we be allowed to feel so much for people who don’t feel anything for us?” Midway through the weekend, however, it seems as though this question applies to Frank himself, who, despite being charmed by and attracted to Lindsay, refutes her soon to be open advances suggesting that they explore their rapport beyond the three-day stint required of them in Paso Robles. Frank is unconvinced that what they have could turn out to be anything other than two people using each other to get through a harrowing in its maudlinness wedding. Of course, his I’m immune to emotions facade is all designed to make the viewer believe he’s a teddy bear just trying to avoid getting hurt after watching the trainwreck of his own parents’ marriage unfold. Thus, to prove his point about the futility of love, when Lindsay asks him, “Do you care about anything?” he retorts, “How many times in your life have you been in love?” She replies, “Once.” To prove his point, he inquires, “What was it like?” knowing full well it was the worst experience of her life.
Hovered amid the wine barrels at eleven a.m. for yet another enforced activity (wine tasting), Frank mocks the fool’s paradise the bride and groom showcase, insisting that he’s learned from his own parents’ mistakes, particularly his mother and her many marriages. But Lindsay insists, “You can’t blame people for believing their own lives will be different.” Frank balks, “Yes I can. It’s incredibly egotistical. It might help you to consider the idea that heartbreak is pointless. Because if you had wound up with the person, eventually you would have been miserable anyway.” Lindsay, the semi-plucky voice of feminine wistfulness (a somewhat annoying cliche when considering she’s drawn from a male mind), counters, “But don’t you believe there’s someone for everyone?” Without missing a beat, Frank responds, “Close. I believe that there’s nobody for anyone.” Alas, even despite this belief and being a self-preserving cynic–wielding negativity like a panacea for his ills and general malaise–he can’t help, as Elvis would say, falling in love. Or at least, falling in tolerance with another person for the first time in his life.
That many of the scenes are tautly directed, with a sense of confinement between the two characters, further adds to the feeling that they are very literally stuck with one another. But surely that’s better than being alone, Levin seems to posit. For in the end, it feels as though Lindsay is merely someone who can endure Frank’s intense vitriol for life and all it stands for, while Frank is not the type to go for a younger (therefore dumber) model. So it works out for both of them. Or is it merely just another sad tale of how we end up settling for tolerating someone instead of “loving” them in the Brontëan sense of pining passion after a certain point? Surely Joyce Brabner and Soon-Yi Previn would say yes.
