When Kym (Anne Hathaway) returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt), she brings a long history of personal crisis, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple’s abundant party of friends and relations has gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym—with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama—is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic.
Filled with the rich and eclectic characters that remain a hallmark of Jonathan Demme’s films, Rachel Getting Married paints a heartfelt, perceptive and sometimes hilarious family portrait. Director Demme, first-time writer Jenny Lumet, and the stellar acting ensemble leaven the drama of these difficult but compelling people with wry affection and generosity of spirit. Rated 15 for strong language and moderate sex.
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"the film is worth seeing for Hathaway's brilliant and Oscar-caliber performance"
Welcome back Jonathan Demme to the wonderful world of good film making. After directing some quality documentaries for the past several years (Storefront Hitchcock,Stop Making Sense), Demme has made a return to fictional directing.
The center of the drama is Anne Hathaway, who is not the title character, a chain-smoking ex-model returns home from rehab the day before her sister, the title character matching Hathaway in performance by Rosemarie DeWitt, is getting married to a musician. As a substance abuser whose sole breastplate is wounding derision, she is muddle-headedly buoyant owing to her idea that Rachel's wedding will be an indication for absolute, unreserved affection from her otherwise accepting upscale family.
Hathaway is an utter eye-opener as Kym, and not simply in the sense that she's playing the role against type. Rather, she truly understands and expresses what would happen if the character as which she's normally cast made much different decisions, had different fortunes, went another direction lock, stock and barrel. The rest of the cast delivers performances of a similar caliber. Bill Irwin as the ineffectual, smothering father, Anna Deveare Smith as the girl's empathetic step-mother, Mather Zickel as the Best Man and Tunde Adeibimpe as the groom all deliver strong work.
My only complaint is the film's length. Did we really need to follow the reception in such excruciating detail? By then, most of the film's loose ends were tied up. I liked that Demme and Lumet (a really strong screenplay) refused to offer easy redemption to the characters, but the reception seems to point to the probability that there is more drama is to come but it doesn't truly fulfill. The film is worth seeing for Hathaway's brilliant and Oscar-caliber performance.