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Movie Review: Rachel Getting Married
Hathaway only reason for noticing 'Rachel'
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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A-list actress Anne Hathaway, usually seen in such mainstream productions as The Devil Wears Prada and Get Smart, goes the indie route in director Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married.
Hathaway plays Kym, a troubled young woman who leaves a rehab facility to attend her far more accomplished sister’s wedding. While her relatively tolerant father seeks peace and reconciliation, Kym ignites rage and resentment in her mother and sister, easily destabilizing her already dysfunctional family.
Hathaway’s big, sad eyes make her resemble a motherless baby seal. Life has clubbed Kym, but she survives, though not without debilitating episodes of melancholy and panic. Fortunately, Hathaway is a wonderful actress and, even in the unfocused milieu of Rachel Getting Married, she’s compelling.
The film that surrounds Hathaway is a mess. Director Demme and cinematographer Declan Quinn envisioned Rachel Getting Married as “the most beautiful home movie ever made.”
Cinéma vérité style, Quinn’s handheld camera trails Hathaway as she wanders from room to room in her family’s big Connecticut home. Quinn positions himself in the midst of the melodrama, filming the big cast and a huge collection of extras as if he were a video camera-wielding wedding guest. The mannered, unsteady results could be NYPD Blue outtakes.
Rachel Getting Married also has a self-conscious, smug tone, as if it were made exclusively for the filmmakers, actors and critics.
Hathaway, at least, projects genuine terror as her family’s perpetual black sheep. The exploits of Kym, a handful beneath a ragged bobbed haircut, continue to demand attention. Despite Hathaway being best-known for comedic roles, Kym’s restless guilt and hopelessness, a thorny trap from which she’s unlikely to escape, are the major reasons to see Rachel Getting Married.
Playing Kym’s manipulative sister, Rachel, Rosemarie DeWitt has moments of truth, enough to make her character practically a villain. But the sisters’ divorced parents, played by Bill Irwin and Debra Winger, lack dialogue that would let them transcend the film’s artificiality.
Rachel Getting Married’s mannered, high-concept pursuit of heightened reality finds falseness instead. From the forced cheerfulness of pre-wedding activities and long, bland rehearsal dinner toasts to the epically multicultural wedding day, Rachel Getting Married is an often grating exercise that’s nevertheless lifted by Hathaway’s performance.
