Dir. Jonathan Demme, US, 2008, 113 mins
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Debra Winger, Bill Irwin, Tunde Adebimpe
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Jonathan Demme has spent the past few years immersing himself in documentary filmmaking and here merges the techniques he's mastered into a skewed dogma-lite, docu-drama depicting the traumatic weekend of a fractured family's nuptial, which is a unique piece of work but only a partial success.
When wayward daughter Kym (Hathaway) returns to the family home for the wedding of her big sister Rachel (DeWitt) she brings what might kindly be described as emotional baggage; a dark family tragedy, numerous stints in rehab, debt, and even a hint of promiscuous sexuality. However, this isn't a fluffy rom-com in which Kym slowly wins over the gathered family and friends but a caustic deconstruction of family dynamics with a pained central performance and little or no cathartic pay-off.
The free form shooting style is initially jarring but Demme has employed this for the sole reason of enveloping the viewer within the claustrophobic environment of the Buchman family. Immediately you know you are along for the ride, a guest at the wedding and throughout the film this in-your-face style reminds you that it's not going to be an easy watch.
This approach does though have a detrimental effect on the film's narrative. Demme appears to want the whole of Rachel Getting Married to come across as an extended home video and when was the last time you wanted to watch 113 mins of family squabbling? This results in some rather repetitive extended sequences of dancing and in particular the pre-wedding dinner speeches, which go on for an interminably long time but provide little or no character insight.
A tale of two sisters, the overwhelmed storyline means that, apart from Bill Irwin's fragile father, this is a showcase for the talents of DeWitt and Hathaway. Their stories are ones of transition and your empathy switches back-and-forth between the two. Impressive as DeWitt is though, she is just a catalyst for Hathaway's performance. Whenever the focus threatens to be lost, up she steps with her deep set, mascara stained eyes to give the film a dramatic slap in the face. From an AA meeting that generates into a drama school exercise, before Kym gets to tell her story in a raw, confrontational and utterly believable manner, to the deliciously venomous retort upon seeing her sister in her wedding dress “I would swear to God that you were puking again,” Demme owes a lot to his leading lady because without her this would be just another tired genre movie.
In its striving for reality Rachel Getting Married succeeds all too well with regard to those long periods of mundanely indulgent wedding antics. It does though have a beautifully real, three-dimensional anti-hero at its core, and is worth recommending for that alone. |
