Go watch White Wedding. It’s smart and it’s sweet, and when an audience streams out of a theatre with goofy smiles humming Brenda Fassie you know it’s a winner.

People were genuinely delighted. The plot does, towards the end, veer off into slightly corny territory, but by that stage you’re so in love with the characters that it doesn’t matter.

The question that seems to come up whenever a local movie gets good press is “Would you enjoy it as much if you weren’t South African?”
And I think the answer is: probably not. Nothing’s as funny as an in-joke. But while it does mock certain South African ways of thinking it does so in such good taste and with such affection that there’s no need for culture-cringe casualties to be stretchered out to the Leon Schuster ward. (I heard someone put their own eye out halfway through Mr Bones 2. True Story.)

There are few things as enjoyable as laughing at a movie, and then being set off again by the sound of your fellow-viewers’ laughing. The performances are subtle but consistently engaging, with a heartbreaking-endearing delivery by Kenneth Nkosi as Elvis, the beleaguered groom-to-be. And you’re with him, really with him, through his traumatically stressful odyssey from Jo’burg to Cape Town.

Rapulana Seiphemo handles the role of the best man Tumi, a misunderstood Camps Bay playboy, with great style, and only when he flashes that grin do we see traces of the slum lord in Jerusalema.

The relationship between Ayanda the bride (a swan-like Zandile Msutwana), her sister and their mother provides some of the most entertaining exchanges, particularly with Mama’s interpretation of what a white wedding should be. The South African viewer knows roughly what’s to come when a goat is introduced into the storyline. The British hitchhiker called Rose (Jodie Whittaker) does not, and calls him George.

We have seen themes of traditional versus progressive, old and young, black and white, rural and urban, played out on our screens repeatedly, and they naturally run the risk of being trite. But director Jann Turner deftly sidesteps that trap, and has given us a true gem.

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