A Saviour, Steadfast and True
HAPPILY EVER AFTER – a film by Joan Carr-Wiggin – SPOILERS ⁓
Heather
On the advice of her father’s doctor, filmmaker Heather (Janet Montgomery) reluctantly returns home after a long absence. She expects to find her alcoholic dad near death, but that turns out to not be so. Heather is full of sarcasm and anxious to get back to her real life, until she sees her high school sweetheart for the first time in years, and allows herself some wistful thinking. Heather’s high school best friend is the about-to-be-married Sarah Ann (Sara Paxton), a bubbly young woman who persuades Heather to film her wedding.
Sarah Ann with new BFF Amanda and old best friend Heather in the empty and under construction house where Sarah and Keith plan to live.
As she interviews people for the wedding video, Heather discovers that everyone in town is unhappy with their life choices. (Not until later does she discover that most have made secret arrangements to compensate.) Heather is implacable in her insistence that people should be true to themselves, but nothing in town changes until Sarah Ann’s father Doug (Al Sapienza) the town’s Chief of Police, fails to draw his gun when confronting some armed robbers and is found next morning bound and gagged in the local pharmacy. The incident makes him look foolish, and his is the first facade to fall apart.
Sarah Ann’s mom Ria (Alex Kingston) and Heather’s dad Walt (Peter Firth) – Ria means “estuary” in Spanish. An estuary is the tidal mouth of a river, and Kingston was River Song on DR WHO.
Sarah Ann is scheduled to marry a cop named Keith (Alex McCooeye), who compares his fiancé to his car (a red Dodge Charger that we never get to see). Keith loves his car and looks more than a little like Barney Fife. Sarah Ann’s well-rationalized reason for marrying him is to make her parents happy, but it seems they’re doing all right by themselves. Sarah Ann’s mom Ria (Alex Kingston) is having an affair with Heather’s widowed dad. Her father is clandestinely involved with restaurant owner Vendana (Laara Sadiq).
Vendana
When Heather was in high school, she had an affair with an attractive physics teacher named Colin (Tom Cullen), who was and still is married to the seemingly less-than-intellectual Lisa (Melanie Scrofano). Colin is currently having an affair with Sarah Ann, and Heather comes to believe (for a while) that Sarah Ann and Colin are in love and should be together. (Colin tells Heather he loves Sarah Ann, who also says she loves Colin, but Heather neglects to ask what each of them means by that.)
The town healed itself quickly after Heather left without saying goodbye. Sarah Ann smoothly replaced Heather as Colin’s lover, just as Amanda (Naomi Snieckus) replaced Heather as Sarah Ann’s best friend.
Heather and Sarah Ann in the bushes outside Colin’s house.
The best scene happens when Heather, Sarah Ann, Amanda, and Lisa attend the local karaoke night. Everyone wears pink paper crowns, and we learn that Lisa is much more than the airhead she usually seems to be (though she still has little fashion sense and remains apparently oblivious to her husband’s affairs). After a few drinks, Lisa admits (to herself as well as to the others) that she wants to leave Colin and head for the big city like Heather did.
Amanda, who wants nothing more than to be married, delivers a lovely interpretation of a very old song, “Cuddle Up A Little Closer, Lovey Mine“. She is amazed that Lisa has a hot husband and doesn’t want to keep him.
Lisa
Before Amanda’s song, a slightly drunk Lisa talks about her relationship with Colin: “We were just the two best-looking people at Guelph University, so we just thought it was fate to get married. He had this leather jacket that he looked so hot in. And then the only job he could get was in this hell hole, and the only job I could find was in an insurance agency, and then I just started to think everybody’s life sucks. And then I met Heather, She studied film. She lives in the city. She makes movies.” And after Heather tries to tell her that that’s not quite the way her life is, Lisa continues: “I’m afraid if I don’t do something, we’re gonna have a baby and he’s gonna make Department Head, and I’m gonna make Office Manager, and this will be my life, forever.”
At Sarah Ann’s wedding rehearsal, the Chief learns of his wife’s infidelity, and things come to a head. A gun is involved, but the patriarch wielding it is quickly disarmed. In Heather’s home town, tragedies are surmountable, but we are left to imagine whether or not they are overcome. The story of Sarah Ann starts off like a greeting card movie, but instead of things working out as expected, things work out as they should.