The Wedding Gift (1993)

Alternately titled Wide-Eyed and Legless, Richard Loncraine’s The Wedding Gift (1993) chronicles the strained marriage between a wheelchair-bound housewife and her overworked husband. Julie Walters stars as Diana, an attractive young woman whose sudden inability to walk baffles all of the doctors and specialists who hope to find a cure. Devastated by his wife’s condition, the well-meaning Deric (Jim Broadbent) struggles to keep his failing lingerie factory afloat while humoring romantic advancements by a comely blind novelist (Sian Thomas). Loncraine’s tragicomedy is both heartfelt and well observed, but the director’s greatest coup is his casting. Walking or not, Walters cuts a fine figure in the scenes where she begs her husband’s help in giving her a rub-a-dub tub scrub.