WEDDINGS are meant to be joyous celebrations, but movies are much more inclined to seize upon the theme as an opportunity to expose characters under pressure, during the fraught preparations and after the nuptials when mixed with their new in-laws, writes MICHAEL DWYER.
Jonathan Demme skillfully navigates the audience through a rollercoaster of emotions in his bittersweet serious comedy, Rachel Getting Married. The future spouses are an inter-racial couple, and it's refreshing that this is never mentioned as an issue, showing how far the world and the movies have come since the liberal hand- wringing of Guess Who's Coming to Dinnerin the mid-1960s.
Rosemarie DeWitt (from Mad Men) is radiant as Rachel, the bride-to-be whose precision-planned wedding at the family home in Connecticut is just days away. Enter the black sheep of the family, Rachel's volatile sister Kym (Anne Hathaway), who has been let out of rehab for the weekend.
Still riddled with guilt over a fatal accident when she was 16 and stoned at the wheel of a car, Kym seems permanently on edge, even though she’s “nine months clean”, and she puts everyone else on edge.
The tense atmosphere is heightened in Declan Quinn‘s restlessly prowling handheld camerawork, closely observing facial expressions and body language to reveal anxieties and insecurities. That spontaneity is mirrored in the improvisation Demme encourages from his talented cast as they navigate the complications strewn through a perceptive screenplay. Jenny Lumet’s artful scenario nimbly bypasses the cliches, contrivances and compromises of the wedding movie, and is rooted in honesty and compassion.
Hathaway, having comfortably settled into grown-up roles in The Devil Wears Pradaand Brokeback Mountain, plays Kym in a revelatory performance that produces an intense and affecting study in human frailty. The unease in her relationship with Rachel is palpable throughout, and sparks fly when long-festering bitterness surfaces between Kym and her estranged mother. In her first significant screen role in more than a decade, Debra Winger makes a welcome comeback as the mother, reminding us what a versatile and fearless actress she is.
Rachel's groom (Tunde Adebimpe) is a successful musician, and the guests and performers at the wedding provide an intoxicating, ethnically diverse mix that includes the director's son, Brooklyn Demme, on electric guitar for a hard-rock rendition of Here Comes the Bride.
The music in its own right would have made this wedding too good to miss, whatever reservations one might have about sharing the same space as the dysfunctional family at its centre.
