Romantic Comedy 'And Mrs' Sees Aisling Bea Face a Wedding and a Funeral

The rules of romantic comedies are simple and finite: The story's focus is a love story. It should probably make you laugh more than you cry. It can (and should) tackle familiar tropes like friends to lovers, opposites attract, or forced proximity. Often, the couple must face an obstacle that drives them apart, only for the duo to find their way back to one another in time for wedding bells to ring before the credits roll. 

Spoiler alert: The forthcoming British film And Mrs appears to do almost none of those things, instead deciding to turn the genre on its head for a complicated story of love, grief, and death. The drama follows the story of Gemma, who reluctantly says yes when her American boyfriend Nathan proposes. But when he suddenly drops dead shortly before their wedding day, Gemma vows to marry him anyway, launching a campaign to overcome her loved one's objections, public opinion, and even English law. (Fun fact: Posthumous marriage --- known as necrogamy or "ghost marriage" --- is actually allowed in a handful of countries, most notably France.)

Aisling Bea (Alice & Jack) stars as Gemma, alongside Colin Hanks (A Friend of the Family) as Nathan and Billie Lourd (American Horror Story) as his sister, Audrey, who develops a complicated and nuanced bond with the woman who would have been (and still wants to become!) her sister in law. 

"Gemma’s crusade becomes a device to explore her relationship with her late husband and thus London - the city where they lived and loved," director Daniel Reisinger (Sideswiped) said in a statement. "Beyond that, thematically, the story is a rebellion against the famous British ’stiff upper lip'. Its rallying cry is that there is no ‘proper’ way to grieve, and that love can conquer all - even death."

Here's the film's synopsis. 

And Mrs is a high concept comedy drama about an Irish woman living in London whose American fiancé dies shortly before their wedding day. At the encouragement of the fiancé’s free-spirited sister - and for a host of her own, emotionally complex reasons - the-bride-to-be decides to go ahead and marry him anyway, but has to overcome public opinion, the law and even her own family’s objections before she can.

The ensemble also includes Susan Wokoma (Enola Holmes), Harriet Walter (Archie), Elizabeth McGovern (Downton Abbey), Omari Douglas (It's a Sin), Peter Egan (Unforgotten), Sinead Cusack (Napoleon), Paul Kaye (Trying), Samuel Barnett (Murder in Provence), Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who), and Nish Kumar (The Mash Report).

And Mrs. is Reisinger's feature film debut, directed from a script by Melissa Bubnic (Stags). He is also an executive producer, alongside Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Edward Caffrey, Rupert Preston, and Josh Pomeranz. Dan Hine is producer. 

"For me, this film will always be more personal than most because (and I still can't believe I'm saying this) I lost my mother to COVID shortly before pre-production," Reisinger said in a statement. "It’s an unfortunate bond I ended up sharing with many of my cast and crew: Colin who lost his mother in tumultuous circumstances in his early 20s; Aisling’s father took his own life when she was only three; and Billie famously lost her mother, Carrie Fisher, and grandmother, Debbie Reynolds, within 48 hours of each other So what drew us all to this script? I feel that post-pandemic, now more than ever, we need stories like And Mrs that let us laugh through the grief."

And Mrs will have a limited run in theaters beginning Friday, September 20, before arriving on digital on-demand on Friday, September 27, 224.