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'Rachel Getting Married'

There is a long-standing cinematic tradition of celebrating the trials and tribulations, problematic relationships and sibling temper tantrums that tend to rear their head the minute most families are reunited for a stress-inducing domestic gathering. 



It is a familiar setup that has produced more side-splitting comedies than gut-churning dramas, but director Jonathan Demme isn't interested in mining cheap laughs from the usual sibling catfighting.

In the small-scale indie " Rachel Getting Married ," he turns the domestic drama genre on it head and into a touching, humorous and at times frightening roller coaster ride of the pain that one daughter's long-running personal drama of drug use and self-destruction has on all those around her. 



The high quotient of angst and neurosis is rough going at times, and it is not recommended for those in the mood for the dumb comedies populating theaters at the moment, but I do recommend seeing it. The running time is stretched out to hair-pulling proportions, but it has a real grasp on human emotions that restores our faith in the transforming abilities of film as an art form.



It gets a lot of comic mileage from the humorous title, since although Rachel ( Rosemarie DeWitt ) is the one getting married, her attention-grabbing sister Kym ( Anne Hathaway ), a drug addict unleashed from a nine-month stint in rehab to attend the nuptials, is getting all the attention. It is not long before all the long-simmering resentments come tumbling out of the closet and her tortured past is illuminated.



The self-centered anti-heroine of the film, she is prone to manic temper tantrums and unpleasant bouts of truth-telling that might not be true at all. In short, her presence is going to be a huge debacle for all concerned if she can't pull herself together before the reception.

In her more uncharitable moments, she shags the best man, guilt-trips the maid of honor title from her sister's best friend, uses a disastrous prenuptial dinner toast as a reason to shift the attention to her suffering and gets in a car accident as a result of her pig-headed stubbornness.



It is clear that she cares about the people closest to her, but can't stop hurting them, and she is finding that it might not be possible to go home again.

The script attempts to temper her bad-tempered moodiness through saddling a tragic incident from the past onto her, but it isn't needed. It is a cheap tactic designed to get us on her side, but there is enough angst here as it is. Her monstrous self-absorption is supposed to be cringe-inducing, but it is hard to hate her and most of the credit should go to Hathaway for that.



In her grittiest role to date, she is required to act an astonishing gamut of emotions from deep-seated anger to hurt and perhaps redemption at the film's end. It is a true tour-de-force performance that slams the door shut on princess diaries and pointless It Girl roles.



This isn't a one-girl routine though and the rest of the cast offers substantial help. In particular, Debra Winger is astounding in the smallish role of the girls' remarried mother, and in the most gut-churning scene, her hurricane of repressed anger is the definition of great acting.



The brittle dialogue cuts to the bone and the emotional outbursts are fast and furious.

It helps that the hand-held docudrama camera technique that Demme adopts for the film places us right there, but at most, there is enough material here for a good hour of screen time. Instead there are a number of scenes that are stretched out past all limits of human tolerance and the climactic third act collapses into a spectacular heap.

The talented Demme is operating on a much smaller scale from the delirious heights of his greatest hits, 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs" and 1993's "Philadelphia," and he lets his self-indulgent tendencies get the better of him.

 

The director is one of our most gifted auteurs, but he has squandered a good deal of his output in recent times on under the radar political documentaries and concert films and he seems to still be in that mindset. The character conflict is dropped for long stretches to clear the room for a series of long musical interludes and multicultural dance sequences that grinds the film to a complete and utter halt.

It is a shame since there is a lot to admire here.  

No, it is not a perfect film, but it is one hell of a ride. It places a lot of demands on the audience and isn't interested in letting us out of the theater feeling good. In spite of its shortcomings, it is as unpredictable, complicated and hopeful as real life and that is high praise indeed.