The Accidental Husband

Anyone could make a romantic comedy. The basic components of the genre have been intractably etched into the public consciousness: a simple conceit that leads to a convoluted farce; a cinematically alluring cityscape; a wedding scene; Colin Firth. In many ways The Accidental Husband is just the latest rigidly conventional star vehicle to fall from Hollywood's inexhaustible rom-com production line. But in other ways Uma Thurman's long-term pet project attempts to reach beyond its formulaic shackles. Take, for example, the light touch of Bollywood domesticity in the form of the Indian restaurateurs who live below Thurman's illicit love interest; or the unusually weighty cast of high-brow supporting actors like Sam Shepard and Isabella Rossellini; or the Woody Allen-esque wordplay and at least one scene of naturalistic dialogue in the style of the late Robert Altman.

It's the night of The Accidental Husband's world premiere in London, and a pack of journalists are seated in an anonymous room somewhere in the guts of the Vue Cinema in Leicester Square as the film's stars, Uma Thurman and Colin Firth, do their smiley, scribbly thing a few hundred times outside on the red carpet. An agitated young man in an expensive suit strides in. "The talent will be here in five minutes," he announces, before warning, "There will be no photography in this room. Please be professional." He scuttles off. A full forty minutes of idle chat and question rehearsing later, Thurman and Firth finally arrive in that brouhaha of fawning that always surrounds "talent" of their repute. Looking even more statuesque in real life, the heavily made-up Thurman pulls attention effortlessly, as us quotidian drones try to reconcile the star before us with the samurai-swinging, blood-splattered heroine of Kill Bill. Firth scrubs up nicely too.

The Accidental Husband is likely to split audiences. There is plenty of fodder there for those who wish to dismiss it as a clichéd 90 minutes of multiplex schlock. But there are also moments that are refreshingly unsentimental: when the love-torn Emma (Thurman) is waiting to be married under false pretences, for example, her father says, sincerely, "You're perfect," to which she replies, "I'm fucked."

Firth plays Richard, a refined but awkward book publisher, the archetypal 'Englishman in New York'. In the first scene he and fiancée Emma are lying on the bed in his stylish apartment on a sunny weekend morning, and he wears a lilac waistcoat and grey trousers. That's right: a lilac waistcoat. It also transpires that he is a comfort eater, stuffing his face with biscuits and chocolate in times of stress. Firth, for his part, is dismissive of the stuffy English stereotype that he's virtually patented: "The quintessential Englishman I play I've decided doesn't exist. You don't run into him very often. I mean look around this room, there aren't many Mr Darcys. I think he's a figment of folklore, film-lore and I do realise that there are subversions of that figure that tend to appear in my work. But if you look for people who are like that they're usually overplayed, arch versions of themselves.

"I was being questioned by a group of Greek journalists," he continues, relaxing into anecdote, "and they were insisting on the stereotypical Englishman, that no Englishman had ever grown his hair long, played electric guitar, pierced his ear, it had never happened. There was no Johnny Rotten, no John Lennon, it was only Prince Philip. Who I pointed out happened to be Greek! My character exists in the hands of actors but not in reality."

Thurman adds her own caveat: "He talks about the quintessential Englishman not existing but it does exist very strongly in a lot of women's minds!"

Enter the diametric opposite to Firth's Richard. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Patrick is a stubbly-faced Noo Yawk fireman whom we first encounter as he's being sent off in a game of soccer (football, in our speak) for angrily remonstrating with the referee. His path first crosses Emma's on the car journey home, when he hears his own fiancée calling into Emma's radio advice show, Real Love, to be told to cancel the wedding. Vowing revenge, he enlists his teenage Indian neighbour to hack into the city registry and 'marry' himself to this selfish, distant socialite. As you do. When Emma discovers this act of sabotage, she pursues Patrick, it all gets a bit complicated, and it's not difficult to surmise what happens next.

Thurman has appeared in several recent comedies to varying degrees of success – Prime, The Producers, My Super Ex-Girlfriend – but The Accidental Husband dates back to a time when she was confined to serious acting. "About ten years ago I was in period dramas and dressed up in corsets and so on, and some of them were good, but I've always wanted to do what I wasn't being asked to do and I couldn't get arrested to play in any contemporary comedy in America. I couldn't even get a meeting, which frustrated me to no end, so when I found this script I felt, well this is a good character, and a good idea and a great title, I'll just do it myself, I'll cast myself. So that's how it got started. A little attempt to bust into another genre."

Thurman appointed herself producer, and eventually secured the services of Griffin Dunne in the director's chair, who originated the Indian sub-text which provokes some of the film's loudest laughs. "Griffin Dunne was begged to direct this film repeatedly and declined repeatedly," Thurman says, "because he had a history of making Practical Magic and chick-flicks and he didn't want to be 'the girl director'. In the beginning the concept was good but it was a bit generic. So when he came in and did his draft with a new writer he brought in that whole cultural element, which is quite wonderful and fresh and unusual."

As the more worthy, film-centred questions run dry, matters take a turn for the trashy...

What's the appeal of firemen, Uma?

"What's not to like? I guess that's the question for many women."

Uma, could you have a back-up career as a radio DJ?

"I would love any back-up career that I could do without going into hair and make-up."

Colin, how does it feel to be lusted after by so many older women?

"I actually find that I'm increasingly lusted after by women beyond pensionable age. I was told of a woman in hospital with high blood pressure who was 103 and she was told not to watch any more Pride and Prejudice."

Uma, is there any chance of you picking up the samurai sword again any time soon?

"You know I should make another female hero action film but I haven't found a script good enough that demanded that I go through all that exercise."

When the questions get too personal, Thurman simply gives out one of her affected, preppy laughs and refuses to be drawn, while Firth proves himself much more relaxed and witty than the usual jilted snob he plays on screen. After half an hour of playful interrogation, the PR calls time and Thurman and Firth are escorted off to some other promotional duty. As we depart, Thurman can be seen disappearing into a lift with her coterie of assistants. In the film, fireman Patrick stops an elevator to make out with Emma at the film's romantic climax. With Thurman's regimented schedule, it seems unlikely that life is going to imitate art on this occasion.