‘After the Wedding,” a gender-flipped remake of an Oscar-nominated 2006 Danish film by Susanne Bier, is, on one level, a showcase for Julianne Moore. As the actress demonstrated in the recent “Gloria Bell” — also a remake of a lauded foreign film, and, as with “Wedding,” one that boasts a producing credit by its star — Moore knows how to pick great material and make it her own.
Here, she puts even more of a stamp on it, since the story’s dynamics change in ways both subtle and significant as a result of the casting. These new — and, arguably, more powerful — dynamics are generated by not one actress here, but two: Michelle Williams, taking up the lead role originated by Mads Mikkelsen, and Moore, who steps into the shoes of Rolf Lassgard.
It’s impossible to say exactly how and why the new film works so differently from the original without spoilers. Suffice it to say that biology plays just as big a role as psychology, in a story that delivers one huge twist. That makes this “Wedding” not just more poignant but, in a way, also more problematic: By making male characters female — and vice versa, in the case of Billy Crudup’s Oscar, the husband to Moore’s character — the story creates new dramatic possibilities and new problems.
Adapted by writer-director Bart Freundlich, Moore’s husband, who has previously worked with her in “The Myth of Fingerprints,” “World Traveler” and “Trust the Man,” the story centers on Williams’ Isabel, an American do-gooder who has been working in an Indian orphanage for many years, and who must now make a reluctant pilgrimage to New York City to deliver a sales pitch to a wealthy business executive named Theresa (Moore) who is considering donating millions of dollars to Isabel’s cause. During the course of that visit — which coincides with the wedding of Theresa’s daughter (Abby Quinn) — Isabel discovers an unexpected connection with Oscar, a successful sculptor.
