Watching Rachel Getting Married is a lot like being forced to sit through an overly long wedding video in the living room of a couple you hardly even know. When Kym (Anne Hathaway) returns from rehab to be at her older sister Rachel’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) multicultural wedding, her unresolved issues make the journey home with her, exposing the dysfunctional side of her family at a time meant for celebration. Kym desperately seeks to redeem herself in the eyes of her relatives, unable to forgive herself for a tragic accident that happened 10 years earlier as a result of her drug addiction.

Uncharacteristic of director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia), the film goes out of its way to capture the home video feel. Multiple handheld cameras work each scene, often going as far to expose each other in the frame, interchanging between notably long takes and rapid edits. The result is a film that certainly feels like an authentic wedding video than it does a straightforward Hollywood drama, but it doesn’t necessarily benefit from it for that reason. Like many home videos, Rachel Getting Married is full of long scenes that are of little interest to an outside viewer; a dinner party scene lasting 20 minutes grew incredibly tiresome to watch. Sure these scenes work to develop characters, clearly showing the great love that exists within the family beyond their heated arguments, but the monotony of these mostly inconsequential scenes caused my interest in their story to wean. The shaky camera style also can be quite nauseating, with the irregular frames and jarring edits enough to cause momentary confusion.  Whilst I do somewhat admire Jonathan Demme’s attempt at something different, Rachel Getting Married ultimately feels like a failed experiment.

As Anne Hathaway’s Academy Award nomination goes to show, the film’s strength lies in its performances. A far cry from the actress who frequently stars in Disney family films such as The Princess Diaries, Hathaway’s sarcastic yet sincere performance as Abbey, gaining your sympathy despite her often unlikable character, will certainly see her credibility as a dramatic actor increase greatly. Mind you, I wouldn’t have gone as far as to say she deserved an Oscar nomination, especially when Rosemarie DeWitt is so easily overlooked by the Academy for her role in support as Rachel. DeWitt’s dynamic performance is easily the film’s highlight, as her struggle to deal with her sister’s issues whilst on the verge of her marriage is captured with great talent. Bill Irwin as the overly supportive father and Debra Winger as the divorced and distant mother are also well suited to their roles. Unfortunately, these great performances ultimately exist within a film that can’t make the most of them.

Verdict:

The distracting home-video style of film-making, along with a character driven story that struggles to engage amidst the many protracted scenes, makes the first 60 minutes of Rachel Getting Married feel more like a MTV Reality TV show than an engrossing drama. Whilst the film does draw you in towards the conclusion, it’s not enough to elevate Rachel Getting Married from merely being labelled as the film that launched Anne Hathaway’s career in dramatic acting.

[rating: 2.5/5]

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