Anne Hathaway won an Oscar nomination for her performance in this drama. Playing Kym the psychologically fragile, emotional baggage carrying sister returning to the family home for the celebration and event of her sister Rachel’s wedding would be a difficult role.
Ms. Hathaway handled it beautifully, making the character totally believable, heartbreakingly real and earns the audiences sympathy and care.
In a drama of this type, one could expect a bathos of dysfunction and negativity exhibited in scenes that hit the viewer with a tsunami of emotion. Quite the contrary, although Rachel Getting Married is not a comic look at anything, there are some humorous moments, and the entire thing feels very real in both emotion and events.
Kym moves from tough as nails wise-cracking worldly young woman, to a creature with emotions as fragile as glass, and then back again to her rehab personality with a speed that can be a dizzy encounter for the viewer. However, it feels so true to life, and gives Kym such depth that we grieve for her sorrow and wish for her to find the peace she so desperately wants.
There are no villains in this film, bad things have happened, but at this point in time those are in the past, and the members of the family obviously have survived, even retaining a great deal of affection for each other. The viewer can see the problems that exist, or where there might have been problems in the past, but that is not the point of the film.
There is a stepmother, but she is anything but wicked, there is an emotionally absent real mother, who cares for her girls, but obviously didn’t or doesn’t understand either of them. None of this is an issue to ruin Rachel’s big day. The emotional confrontations are played out, but without an overblown sense of the dramatic.
Yes, every family has problems, but they also have joys, and most importantly love, and ultimately I think that is what Rachel Getting Married is trying to tell us.
Rachel Getting Married is presented in widescreen on single disc with a running time of 113 minutes. There are audio tracks in both French and English and there a subtitles in French. The special features include deleted scenes, Filmmaker and Cast Commentaries, a question and answer session with both cast and crew, a behind the scenes featurette and The Wedding Band.
Beautifully acted, the only complaint is that the camera work seems jumpy with too much movement which can detract from the performances and settings.
Rachel Getting Married is now available at Amazon . It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a June 29th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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