Andrew and Jeremy Get Married

Don Boyd’s eclectic career includes producing films for Derek Jarman and directing episodes of Ruby Wax’s TV show. This documentary follows two gay men, Andrew and Jeremy, as they prepare to become one of the first same-sex couples to take advantage of Ken Livingstone’s civil register (a precursor to the nationwide Civil Partnership Act that will come into full effect later this year). The two men are very different: Jeremy is a Cambridge-educated literary aesthete who was raised in India; Andrew is a former bus driver and ex-junkie from a Croydon council estate. Boyd intercuts the day of their marriage with scenes of their relationship in the months leading up to their big day. The film interestingly hints at two very different gay experiences in late twentieth-century Britain, and most moving is Jeremy’s recollection of how many of his friends have lost younger partners to AIDS. There’s a naff scene that recreates the pair’s first kiss in an Earl’s Court club, but overall this is illuminating and touching, if rather light. It probably belongs on TV.