Del Shores’ comedy from the year 2000, ‘Sordid Lives’, could be described as the product of a mix between John Waters and Jeff Foxworthy. It has traces of grotesque camp style humor alongside redneck drama, as if The American South was transformed by drag queens. Even though the movie received mostly negative feedback from critics, its acceptance in the LGBTQ community led to the creation of a short television series in 2008. Now, the film has evolved into a sequel; ‘A Very Sordid Wedding’, which keeps the underlying narrative along with the long-haired, smoking attitude that first attracted arthouse viewers 17 years ago. Shores’ proclivity of using heavy handed drama is a rare taste that is better suited for theater than film, but, even though the film is unlikely to attract new viewers, fans of the original movie will not be disappointed.
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Powdered in Winters, Texas the name of the real-life rural town where Shores (“Daddy’s Dyin’: Who’s Got the Will?”) was raised, “A Very Sordid Wedding” continues to ride the tension between the conservative, Southern Baptist town and the gay subculture that persistently tries to turn its policies and sociocultural practices upside down. A man in the first “Sordid Lives” is in the closet and finds coming out to his mother so frightening he sees consults 27 different therapists in Hollywood before going home. In the sequel, that same man, Ty Williamson (Kirk Geiger), has been traveling across America with his husband as they do “marriage-in-every-state” tour awarded by the Supreme Court for legalizing gay marriage. And in the same fashion, his mother, Latrelle (Bonnie Bedelia) has also changed with the times, having to battle the bigots at her church who are holding an “Anti-Equality Revival” to rally support for gay marriage ban in the county. (The county clerk, in a non-speaking role, looks just like Kim Davis infamous for refusing to sign off on marriage licences in Rowan County, Ky.)
Sordid Lives-iverse Ty’s wedding and the local battle “religious freedom” gives the film a natural endpoint, but in the expansive one, there are subplots within subplots.
Following a disastrous attempt at conversation therapy at a mental institution, Brother Boy (Leslie Jordan) is trying to perfect his drag queen act in Longview. Unfortunately, the ‘Hitchhiker Murderer’ a serial killer on the loose has other plans for him and takes him on a road trip to the big city. Presumably, Latrelle’s aunt Sissy (Dale Dickey), who in the last film was astonishingly motivated to quit smoking, has given up permanently. Despite her being deeply religious, having read the Bible from cover to cover, she attempts to ‘make sense’ of the word of God and the Supreme Court. Latrelle’s sister LaVonda (Ann Walker) and her best friend Noleta (Caroline Rhea) are both in the market for love and they find it. One of them, who had previously been Noleta’s old flame (Newell Alexander), ends up in the hospital recuperating from a perplexing stomach ailment.
To be generous, “A Very Sordid Wedding” could be branded as a slice-of-life. However, Shores’ attempt to accommodate the approximately two dozen characters who seem to be attending Winters makes it more of a television episode than a movie. The writer-director strolls toward the wedding allegedly indicated by the title, but for the most part gathers outrageous moments and one-liners like: a store clerk who doubles as a preacher and has prayers for defeating and imprisoning Hillary Clinton; a portrait of Rue McClanahan (the matriarch on the TV show) presiding over a “Singspiration” event; a notebook where Sissy jots down what she considers the correct ways of mentioning races and ethnicities. Many do not land and some of the gags land, but the overall rhythm is staggering and lacking control which is worsened by d. P Paul Suderman’s point and shoot style of filming.
The initial “Sordid Lives” captivated a plethora of gay viewers who witnessed it outside the big city. The sequel has the opportunity to showcase how much Central Texas has and has not changed in 17 years, during which the law evolved from DOMA to marriage equality, albeit with opposition from certain areas. It is sweetly optimistic that a town like Winters can transform pastel colors, from the garish makeup his characters wear. Although cartoonish, this impulse is towards the Southern-fried silliness which diminishes and cheapens it. His Winters is a memory. It is a personal place that is made to seem wonderfully strange.
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