Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This clip shows Muriel (Toni Collette) and Bruce (Matt Day) entering a room, sitting on a beanbag and watching television. Bill Heslop (Bill Hunter), Muriel’s father, appears on the television pleading for news from her. The scene descends into farce as Bruce tries to undress Muriel, mistakenly unzipping the beanbag instead of her jeans. A window breaks, beans erupt and two naked males rush into the room. Flatmate Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) enters, falls and says she cannot feel her legs. Muriel is then seen waiting at the hospital.

Educational value points

• The descent into farce in this seduction scene relies on a few key elements. Bruce’s lustful determination is balanced by Muriel’s ticklishness and laughter, easily mistaken for screams later in the scene. In a desperate attempt to change channels from the news item about her, Muriel switches to a soft-porn dance program, further exciting her seducer. Having unzipped the beanbag rather than Muriel’s trousers, Bruce, in his attempt to take them off, overbalances onto a birdcage, which hurtles through the window.

• Muriel’s Wedding (1994) is an example of tragicomedy, a genre that combines, as the name suggests, elements of tragedy and comedy. This is evident in the clip when the comic fiasco in the apartment ends with Rhonda, suddenly paralysed, being rushed to hospital and Muriel waiting to hear her prognosis. Tragicomedies are sometimes referred to as dark comedies, but often have a happy or bittersweet ending.

• Muriel’s Wedding follows a universal 'ugly-duckling’ plot, whereby an unfairly treated person eventually finds admirers and their rightful position in the world. In the 1840s Hans Christian Anderson wrote a fairytale, The Ugly Duckling, about a swan that is born in the nest of a family of ducks and is treated as an outcast until he is finally accepted by birds of his own species. The ugly-duckling Muriel appears in this clip to have broken away from her family and to now be among friends.

• Toni Collette (1972–) is a highly regarded Australian actor who won the 1994 AFI Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her role as Muriel. Collette left the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) to debut in Spotswood (1992), a role that led to her nomination for an AFI Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She was nominated for an Oscar in 2000 for The Sixth Sense (1999) and for BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for supporting actress in Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

• Rachel Griffiths (1968–) first appeared in television roles before launching her career in film as Rhonda in Muriel’s Wedding, for which she received an AFI Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (1994). In 1998–2002, Griffiths was nominated for four AFI awards, including for directing a short film. She continues to act in television series such as US series Six Feet Under (2001–05) for which she won an AFI International Award (2006).

• PJ Hogan (1962–) directed Muriel’s Wedding and wrote the screenplay. Muriel’s Wedding was nominated for seven AFI awards, including for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and won four, including Best Film. Hogan claims inspiration for the project from watching a bridal shop over the road from his favourite café when he was unemployed in 1988. Both Hogan and Collette were brought to the attention of Hollywood by Muriel’s Wedding and Hogan went on to direct My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) and Peter Pan (2003).