Rachel Getting Married

Plot synopsis:
Kym Buchman (Anne Hathaway) is released from drug rehab for a few days so she can go home to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). At home, the atmosphere is strained between Kym and her family members as they struggle to reconcile themselves with her past and present. Kym's past drug and alcohol fueled antics have more or less made her the black sheep of her rather bohemian family. Kym's father Paul (Bill Irwin) shows intense concern for her well-being and whereabouts, which Kym interprets as mistrust. Kym also resents her sister's choice of her best friend to be her maid of honor instead of her. Rachel, for her part, resents the attention her sister's drug addiction is drawing away from her wedding, a resentment that comes to a head at the rehearsal dinner, where Kym, amid toasts from friends and family, takes the microphone to offer an apology for her past actions, as part of her twelve-step program.
Underlying the family's dynamic is a tragedy that occurred years previously, which Kym retells at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. As a teenager, Kym was responsible for the death of her younger brother Ethan, who was left in her care one day; driving home from a nearby park, an intoxicated Kym had lost control of the car, driving over a bridge and into a lake, where her brother drowned. The day before the wedding, as Rachel, Kym, and the other bridesmaids are getting their hair done, Kym is approached by a man whom she knew from an earlier stint in rehab. He thanks her for the strength she gave him through a story about having been molested by an uncle and having cared for her sister, who was anorexic. Rachel, hearing this, storms out of the hair salon. The story turns out to be a lie, an apparent attempt by Kym to evade responsibility for her addiction.
The tension between the sisters comes to a head later that night at their father's house, when Kym comes home. Rachel reveals she has never forgiven Kym for their brother's death, and suggests that Kym's rehab has been a hoax since she has been lying about the cause of her problems. Kym finally admits responsibility for Ethan's death and reveals that she had been relapsing in order to cope. She gets into her father's car and leaves. Kym heads to the home of their mother Abby (Debra Winger), hoping to find solace with her. However, a fight breaks out between them, when Kym asks Abby why she left Ethan in her care on the night of his death despite knowing that she was often on drugs, suggesting that Ethan would have been better off in Rachel's care. Abby tells Kym she left Ethan with her because she was good to him and that she thinks Rachel is a hypocrite for her accusations.
When Kym makes it clear she thinks her mother's decision was in part responsible for Ethan's death, Abby becomes furious and punches Kym in the face. Kym hits her mother back and drives off in her father's car. While driving away, Kym begins sobbing uncontrollably because she feels Abby has not accepted appropriate responsibility for her part in the actions which ultimately caused Ethan's death. Kym drives the car off the road in an attempted suicide and crashes into a boulder. Rather than summon help, she spends the night in the car while everyone at home worries about what has become of her. The next morning, the day of the wedding, Kym is spotted in the car by passing joggers, who call the police. The police awaken her and give her a sobriety test which she passes. She gets a ride home with the driver of the tow truck who is towing the wrecked car. She makes her way to Rachel's room, as Rachel prepares for the wedding.
Seeing Kym's bruised face from the crash prompts her anger of the previous night to vanish, and Rachel tenderly bathes and dresses her sister. Amid a festive Indian theme, Rachel and her fiancé Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe) are wed. Kym is the maid of honor, and is overcome with emotion as the couple exchanges their vows. Kym tries to enjoy herself throughout the wedding reception but continues to feel out of place and is plagued by the dispute with her mother. Ultimately, her mother leaves the party early, despite Rachel's effort to bring the two together, and the feud between Kym and Abby is left unresolved, suggesting Abby's emotional distance and unwillingness to accept responsibility is the root cause of the family's problems. The next morning, Kym returns to rehab. As she is leaving, Rachel runs out of the house to hug her.

Tags: violence, psychological, realism, storytelling

Review:
Now the newly colored spotlight falls on Anne Hathaway and her powerful turn as Kym in Rachel's Getting Married.The film is a slice of life piece detailing a small space of time, only a few days, where Kym returns home from a rehab clinic just in time for her sister Rachel's wedding.
That technique gave the movie a certain level of improv or even documentary feeling, like the audience was the most silent of voyeurs.Recommendation: A powerful series of moments, filled with terrific acting, that don't quite come together as a film.
Pointless long scenes that didn't advance the story or even appear to have meaning.I'm astounded and I'm not quite sure how they did this, but despite the seemingly compelling subject matter, I managed to get through the film without connecting to even one of the characters.
Sitting through a movie about sibling rivalry at a wedding, especially one starring the doe-eyed and normally facile Anne Hathaway, sounds like a potentially painful way to spend an evening.
Their remarried father Paul is a bundle of loving support to the point of unctuous for both his girls, while their absentee mother Abby is the exact opposite - guarded and emotionally isolated until she is forced to face both her accountability and anger in one shocking moment.Anne Hathaway is nothing short of a revelation as Kym. Instead of playing the role against the grain of her screen persona, she really shows what would happen if one of her previous characters  say, Andy Sachs in "The Devil Wears Prada" - went another route entirely.
After the first 5 minutes, I hated Anne Hathaway's character and I was sea-sick from director Jonathan Demme's hand-held camera work.
I got fully sucked in by Jenny Lumet's (daughter of Sidney, the master) riveting story of a family ripped apart and trying desperately to hold on to what is left.While Hathaway's Kym is getting all the pub, I found Rosemarie DeWitt's Rachel every bit as mesmerizing, though a bit less laser-tongue equipped.
So much self-destructiveness that it makes one wonder why apparent sweet guy Sidney (played oddly by Tunde Adedimpbe of TV on the Radio) wants to have anything to do with this ghastly group.Just to make sure you are absolutely uncomfortable, Lumet tosses in the rarely seen Debra Winger as Kym and Rachel's estranged mother, who has emotionally backed out of their life completely so as not to feel the guilt she deserves for the death of the youngest sibling.There is no way to watch this movie without numerous moments of being squeamish or uncomfortable.
Members of said family are narcissistic, rehab babe Kym (Hathaway); her snobbish sister Rachel; their divorced, weak father and their fed-up mother.I will mention only a few among the movie many problems 1) the music played throughout the film is simultaneously nerve-wracking and monotonous.
No answer; 5) finally, even if Anne Hathaway does a good job, her character is so unlovable, self-centered and self-destructive that it does not elicit the least sympathy.At a certain stage I sincerely hoped that Kym would manage to kill herself, to put an end to her - and the audience - misery and to provide some sort of cathartic moment to this otherwise lethargic movie.
Maybe this is a generational thing but I wholeheartedly agree with those who have said, "Excellent film sabotaged by execrable camera work," "Teenagers Making Video," and "Rachel Gets Married, Audience Gets Headache." When I was an engineer and again as a programmer, we had a saying, "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to do it." Last week I saw W.
The kind of movie that gives films about family dysfunction a good name.Anne Hathaway plays Kym, troubled younger sister to Rachel, who's (as the title suggests) getting married.
Unlike the recent and absolutely atrocious "Margot at the Wedding," which this film reminded me of, "Rachel Getting Married" is full of flawed but deeply sympathetic characters who I for one cared tremendously about.
Anne Hathaway gives the kind of performance that will convince people she's more than just a pretty face, while she's met every step of the way by the less well known Rosemarie Dewitt, who plays Rachel.
In a movie like this, it's crucial that the audience understands the back story that led the characters to their current dynamic, and it's a minor miracle that "Rachel Getting Married" does that without the use of flashbacks, voice over or even extensive scenes of plot exposition.
I went where the characters took me, Anne Hathaway and Rosemary DeWitt are terrific but it is Debra Winger's distant mother that will make me want to see this film again.
In Connecticut, after years of rehab, the drug addicted Kym (Anne Hathaway) is released to go to the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt).
A great performance by Anne Hathaway and a good story gets lost inside a horribly shot and edited film.
This pitch-black-comedy-cum-drama, Rachel Getting Married, bucks two kinds of marriage movies that are fairly common in the two sides of release: one is the schmaltzy, dumb mainstream rom-com like Maid of Honor or The Wedding Planner where A-List actors go in the motions of a batch of conventions-by-checklist, and the other is a glum, mean indie picture like Margot at the Wedding (can't think of others right now like it's ilk, wouldn't want to).
What helps it make it not just watchable, or appealing, but a very good movie, is the fact that the screenplay- by Sidney's daughter Jenny Lumet (as every critic has noted)- is very true to the tragic dimensions amid such a hectic weekend at a Connecticut, upper-middle class house where a wedding will take place with some bad memories and skeletons opened in the process.In fact, for all of Jonathan Demme's efforts to give it a raw and spontaneous energy- he's said it's akin to Altman but I sensed more-so Cassavetes- his approach works best, even at a rough-edged masterful level, when characters are talking/arguing/yelling in a room.
Lumet's story involves the title character (Rosemarie DeWitt) in a weekend where there's much happiness for her and her to-be-spouse, and a good lot of tension because of her sister, Kym (Hathaway), getting out of rehab for the weekend to come to the occasion.To say she's the black sheep is somewhat sugar-coating it, and nearly every moment Hathaway is on camera (or, somewhat in the Altman mode, Demme manages to catch her off-guard in a moment or with a look) is electrifying, by far her best performance if only because she finally has a character to really dig her 'acting' heels into.
This is the only tricky part of the picture, but one I wasn't daunted by; there's a real "indie-movie" spark here that's indescribable.At the end of it all, I'll remember Rachel Getting Married more as an exceptional experiment than a truly great film, but anyone completely sick of seeing ads for sappy marriage comedies or films that treat the families or people gearing up for a wedding like paper figures would do themselves a favor seeking it out.
It's not a documentary so don't treat it like one.The film's obvious strong point, and really the only reason worth watching is Anne Hathaway's performance.
I can see why Anne Hathaway got nominated (I was so hoping she would've evolved from 'The Devil Wears Prada' and 'Get Smart' and like heck she did.) Her performance in 'Rachel Getting Married' was nothing short of astounding, believable and sympathetic  not a minute passed that I truly didn't believe she was reliving her past, remorseful, yearning to change and attempting to cope.
I loved the documentary, real-life feel of the film, the way it's forgiven (on being yet another dysfunctional family drama) and forgotten (that it's actually a movie, that is.) The film, shown over a course of a short period of getting ready, families meeting for the first time, rehearsals, reunions and the actual wedding, was so wonderfully and realistically shot.
The movie's recommended for the exceptional Hathaway performance (much like Clint Eastwood's 'Gran Torino' which is worth seeing, if only for Eastwood's excellent performance, another undeserved Oscar snub) as was the real-life portrayal of a wedding and families brought together.
Demme's Good Direction, Original Score, Excellent performances and a very ordinary Situation of story makes Rachel Getting Married a very memorable film.
Director Jonathan Demme falls rapturously, wrongheadedly in love with screenwriter Jenny Lumet's dysfunctional family at the heart of "Rachel Getting Married".
Anne Hathaway plays smudgy, shaky Kym, a young woman who is given a reprieve from rehab to attend her sister's wedding, yet she is a walking (and talking!) reminder of old wounds and problems-past, and nobody knows how to respond to her and her newfound sobriety.
From the previews of this film I was expecting to see a much more intense story about addiction and dysfunction than what I think it turned out to be.Instead, what I felt I got was a story that didn't make you care very much about the characters and in it's place put a ridiculous and annoying effort into the music -- not to mention the stupidly long wedding sequences that lost their effect after 3+ minutes of the same dancing/drum beats.
It reminded me a lot of Elizabethtown which I watched a good 3-4 times trying to understand why I should care about the characters and how the whole final sequence seemed like a good excuse for the folks working on the movie to add in their favorite tunes for no good reason.The band that played for the most part of this movie sounded very good, but come on!
If the same effort had gone into improving the story and camera work -- which as many others commented made them feel dizzy & nauseous -- instead of adding another track from the band that seemed to be playing non-stop at the family's home, it would have been a much better film....
I immediately noticed that all of God's races were represented, with the exception of Mexicans, because rich, pretentious people cannot conceive of a wealthy, educated Mexican.Just take a poor uneducated person to this movie and I'm sure they will think, "if being rich and educated makes me act like this, then no thank you".Don't waste your time on this crap.
My sister likened the movie to attending an excruciatingly long wedding except without the booze.The acting is good and everyone is giving their all, but the writing is so self indulgent, you just want to throttle all of the characters.
None of it is believable but it seems to think it is some kind of reality.The strangers in the theatre to the right of us AND to the left all said they wished they had spent the two hours somewhere else.Artsy Fartsy Camera-work Tries To Mask Lack of Interesting Characters Bad Acting / Anne Hathaway does nothing special..
Her sister, Kym (Anne Hathaway), is also coming home for the wedding after nine months in rehab for drug addiction.
I now know what seasickness feels like.Anne Hathaway is good as the recovering druggie Kym who shows up at her sister Rachel's wedding after being in and out of rehab for a decade; Rosemarie DeWitt is even better as Rachel.The cast for the parties and the dinner must have been captured during recess at the United Nations.
It was almost like watching home movies.The way I see it is that we were just looking in on these people's lives, there didn't need to be a back story or character exposition because none of that mattered.Hitch and my mom both hated it because they said they felt like they were watching people have intimate conversations with no beginning or ending but I think that was the point.
The problem is they take you out of the movie pretty much every time, they go on for too long, there's about 10 minutes straight of music and dancing at one point.I understand the point of reminding the viewer that life exists out of Kim's world and thus scenes without her make sense, but the movie would have been better if it were almost entirely portrayed from Kim's point-of-view and some scenes capture it perfectly, such as Rachel taking her father to another room to talk, or scenes with people crying after Kim has left the room etc..
All these multicultural, musical, self-aware and self-expressed house guests who have gathered for this upscale, esoteric (vaguely East Indian themed but throw in the United Nations for good measure) wedding with a full dress rehearsal two nights before, all hosted at a home with way-too-many bedrooms....it was as if the cast of Hair had been transported into some retired banker's mansion in Connecticut for a love-in....I mean who ARE all these people and what do they do and how do they earn a living and where do they get their tolerant world view from and how come they can all do witty monologues (or sing a cappella) with a hand-held mike....it didn't all make sense to me and thus I found the whole movie derailed by an unreality....it just seemed like a whole bunch of actors acting...and it was hard to connect with the raw pain the writer no doubt intended we would share and feel.....only when Ann Hathaway's mannerisms and facial expressions conveyed how she felt like she didn't belong amidst the joyous after-wedding celebrations did I, for one, get transcended from seeing an acting performance to the vicarious experience of a point of despair and isolation I am sad to admit I can personally recognize......
The father role was different and I liked what happened there but there wasn't enough in this film to make me keep from getting nauseous...in part from the camera work but also the character development and their lines!
This movie is almost like that hilariously politically-correct and painfully obvious atrocity, Crash, only with more of a focus on interracial and multicultural diversity and one character's (Anne Hathaway, in another forced "bad girl" performance) struggle with drug rehabilitation.
Family gatherings often make for awkward or even unpleasant moments in movies, and Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" presents such a situation.
Anne Hathaway plays Kym, who gets released from rehab for a few days to attend her sister's wedding in Connecticut.
Once she arrives, the family's painful history begins to come out, and every member - Kym included - has to face how s/he has contributed to the problems.Probably the most noticeable thing during the movie is the hand-held camera-work.
one of the most intriguing aspects in this movie for me , was the use of music.Almost all the time you could here somewhere out of the scene, some form of live music was being performed....I liked the sounds that came to ya as watcher.the story well , kinda predictable , but still intriguing..seeing the preparations of an upper class family for the wedding of their oldest daughter.The film reminded me a lot of the work by Robert Altman f.i...
Those bemoaning the existence of the film, and stating things like, "but I consider myself a good critic of movies" when doing so, miss the point, which is, in the end, Rachel Getting Married is an excellent film and, above all, its accessibility is a question of temperament and taste.Some of the acting is second to none..
While I certainly will give Rachel Getting Married for bringing something new to the table, admittedly this "dysfunctional family deals with drama before a wedding" plot has been done way too many times.
It follows two families becoming one at the wedding of Rachel and Sidney, and Rachel's sister Kym (Hathaway), a recovering drug addict, is returning home for the first time in some years.One thing that really stands out to me is the feel and atmosphere of the film.
Demme uses the set and setting, the camera, the actors and in-scene musicians (brilliant pretext that the dad is into music and that many of the family friend's add impromptu notes to the score of this "family movie"), the emotionally-charged and witty script, unobtrusive editing and careful casting to create a movie experience as close to real life as possible.Yes, this is a family movie as it focuses on the wedding of Rachel and the return of her sister that just came back from rehab.
Anne Hathaway comes into her own as a serious dramatic actress in "Rachel Getting Married," a film by Jonathan Demme that is neither as compelling as its champions would argue nor as loathsome as its detractors might insist.Hathaway plays Kym, a recovering drug addict who checks out of rehab to attend her sister's wedding in the country.
I don't know if the performance deserved a nomination but it at least makes this film mildly tolerable.Debra Winger might also have been good had she had more than 4 minutes of screen time (most of which was in the background of these wedding documentary scenes).Here is what doesn't work.
I actually felt like turning it off a few times, and that doesn't happen to me lot.In the end though, I'm glad I stuck with it, because the second half of the film picks up the pace and finally introduces some real character drama.Simply put, this film is about a drug addict who gets leave from rehab for a few days to attend her sister's wedding and pretty much ruins the whole thing.
'Rachel Getting Married' is an exuberant, raw, honest, and painful but in the same time joyful film starring Anne Hathaway in her best performance so far.
In certain films, it is imperative that you jump on a characters back in order to go along on the journey with them.Anne Hathaway proves that she can give a bitching performance by grabbing you by the hand in her first second on camera as Kym the -fresh out of rehab- sister of the bride Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt).