Top End Wedding

(M) ★★★½

Director: Wayne Blair.

Cast: Miranda Tapsell, Gwilym Lee, Kerry Fox, Huw Higginson, Shari Sebbens, Tracy Mann, Ursula Yovich, Matt Crook, Elaine Crombie, Dalara Williams.

"Best funeral ever! #LOL"

When was the last time you saw a film with an indigenous woman in a leading role, let alone a film in which she was a romantic lead opposite a white man?

Outside of The Sapphires (which also starred Tapsell), it's hard to think of many more. This helps make Top End Wedding pretty significant in terms of the Australian cinematic landscape. I don't want to overplay this significance because the important thing is whether the film is any good or not. Having said that, I don't want to downplay it either, because this is kind of a big deal.

But let's get down to brass tacks. Top End Wedding, while far from perfect, is a fun Aussie rom-com that mixes gentle humour and gorgeous travelogue scenery which helps disguise the fact this is a fairly by-the-numbers romance, albeit with an endearing and fascinating cultural twist.

The central couple is Lauren (Tapsell) and Ned (Lee), who become engaged when Ned decides to refocus his life. Given a short window in which to get married by Lauren's domineering workaholic boss (Fox), the pair head to Lauren's hometown of Darwin for a short-notice wedding, only to find her parents have split up recently and her mum has disappeared.

This kickstarts an adventure across the NT as Lauren and Ned try to find Lauren's mum, leaving their friends to put together the perfect wedding in the meantime.

The cultural elements of Top End Wedding and the way it portrays indigenous life and its indigenous characters is beautifully done - these aspects are important but not laboured, significant but matter-of-fact. It's this balance of how the film displays an old culture in a modern world that helps elevate the run-of-the-mill rom-com storyline in a major way, and it contributes to giving the film a distinctive flavour to set it apart in an otherwise often vanilla genre.

It also helps that Lee and Tapsell are charismatic leads with good chemistry. In the wrong hands the slow-starting story could have fallen apart, but they make for a believable couple from the get-go, which helps keep the movie moving in its slower moments. Top End Wedding is a film that builds momentum and emotion, which is another plus.

Lee and Tapsell are supported by a solid cast. Fox is great as the "Cruella de Vil" boss of Lauren who has her own beautiful arc amid the matrimonial and maternal chaos. Higginson is solid as Lauren's blokey yet unravelling father, while Sebbens is a stand-out as one of Lauren's Darwin besties.

These things help overcome the fact that the script and edit are far from perfect. There are distractions and oddities that don't amount to much, and large portions of the story (particularly during the search for Lauren's mother) that don't add a lot. There are some initially strange moments that pay off (such as Lauren's dad's penchant for hiding in the pantry) but just as many that don't. Some of the scenic diversions are, yep, scenic, but that's about all.

But the end result is a heart-warming one, with the final half an hour going a long way towards making up for any flat spots. It could have been funnier, but there's a lot to like in this film that takes us to a lot of places Australian cinema hasn't visited very often, both geographically and culturally.