Column:

Anne Hathaway gets serious in 'Rachel Getting Married'

By Joey Vergara

Published Nov. 13, 2008

There must be a clause somewhere in Anne Hathaway's contract that requires her to make a film that should "expand her career" or "break her out of Disney territory" every few years. These movies balance the period pieces ("Becoming Jane") and big-budget summer flicks ("Get Smart") with the more "edgy" roles.

Unfortunately, she has just had very little luck with the latter half. "Havoc" is a melodramatic teen drama that comes pre-packaged with clichés, and "Brokeback Mountain" doesn't offer much beyond its hype.

That's not to say Hathaway hasn't proven her acting prowess in all these cases, but the problem has been in mediocre films overshadowing her. And that's why it's nice to see Hathaway taking a step in the right direction with "Rachel Getting Married."

Fresh out of rehab, ex-model Kym (Hathaway) returns home for her sister Rachel's marriage to Sidney (played by TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe no less). The dramatic crux of the film relies on Hathaway's character bringing up old arguments and freshening the tension in any room she enters. Screenwriter Jenny Lumet takes her time to uncover Kym's worst offenses through subtle comments in the characters' conversations. Subtlety is the key in "Rachel Getting Married," as Kym's troubled past slowly comes into focus during the four days she is home to create some of the film's most vicious arguments.

It has been a while since director Jonathan Demme ("The Silence of the Lambs") directed a feature film, and it shows. By combining extremely close shots of characters at their most emotional with a documentary-like style, he brings the audience uncomfortably close to the tension. The handheld camerawork concentrates the audience's perspective to a silent observer's, one that shouldn't be in the room in moments of uneasy familial confrontation.

Demme's realistic and in-the-action approach is both a great cinematic tool and a curse in disguise. The film becomes inconsistent when the action breaks into 10-minute-long explorations of the rehearsal dinner and wedding. Each auxiliary character gets his or her moment to give a speech, which quickly degenerates into almost pointless congratulatory comments and awkward acting by Adebimpe.

Simultaneously, Kym's own degeneration into anguish and desire for attention at the same rehearsal dinner is witnessed from a particularly unusual angle. Demme tucks her into corners of shots, leaving only her face and uncomfortable gestures to explain her inner situation, so that by the time she stands up to give her own speech the tension of the scene seems worse than it really is.

Rather than rely on a trite soundtrack, Demme bypasses the problem with another documentarian trick. By including the wedding musicians in many of the scenes, he is able to place music in the film exactly when he needs it. The musicians rehearse a serious piece on the patio at the moment of a confrontation and earlier provide the dramatic shrill ambiance to a friendly competition between Sidney and Rachel's father over the dishwasher.

Many times it comes close to being merely a cheap convention to build tension, but more often it reflects Demme's specially creative approach to a film as emotionally-charged as "Rachel Getting Married."