Film review: And Mrs is likely the most offbeat rom-com you’ll see this year

Aisling Bea and Billie Lourd star in this film

And Mrs is funny, morbid and slyly satirical 

• And Mrs 
• ★★★★☆
• Digital Download

And Mrs (12A) stars Aisling Bea as Gemma, a London-based designer who is left bereft when her fiancée Nathan (Colin Hanks) dies just before they are due to get married.

Undeterred, and utilising an ancient law on the statute books from the time of the Napoleonic wars, Gemma decides to go ahead and marry the dead Nathan — much to the dismay of her best friend Ruth (Susan Wokoma) and her no-nonsense mother (Sinéad Cusack). Aided and abetted by Nathan’s pregnant sister Audrey (Billie Lourd), a one-woman whirlwind of bad choices and anarchic attitudes, Gemma sets out to persuade the Chief Justice (Harriet Walter) to allow a special dispensation for a most unusual wedding.

Written by Melissa Bubnic and directed by Daniel Reisinger, And Mrs is likely the most offbeat rom-com you’ll see this year. That the love interest has expired is only part of it (we get to see Gemma and Nathan’s romance in flashback, and the dead Nathan also has a habit of popping into Gemma’s imagination at the most inappropriate moments); what’s most delightful here is the way in which Aisling Bea slices through the rom-com’s stereotype of the yearning singleton with her brilliantly irreverent and down-to-earth Gemma.

Funny, morbid, and slyly satirical, And Mrs is terrific fun.