What Cooped Up in the ER Does For You

I spent more than three hours at Christ Hospital tonight in the emergency room. (Diagnosis: ruptured tendon. Bad, very bad.) What else is a girl to do while waiting except work on a review?

My voice feels different, a little more thoughtful, a little more New York Times-ish. Maybe it was the forced contemplation time. Maybe it was the movie itself. Maybe it was a combination.

Kym Buchman isn’t exactly the most welcome guest at her sister’s nuptials. She’s on weekend sabbatical from her umpteenth stay in rehab. Her list of offenses includes a mattress fire, driving off a bridge, and the usual cycle of lying/stealing/sneaking. She’s incredibly self-absorbed, even managing to make the rehearsal-dinner toast about her 12 steps. As Anne Hathaway plays her, though, Kym is also an open sore of raw vulnerability.

Although the title of Jonathan Demme’s latest film is Rachel Getting Married, it is Kym on whom the majority of attention first settles. From the time father Paul (Bill Irwin) and stepmother Carol (Anna Deavere Smith) pick her up for the drive to their Connecticut home, jittery Kym lights cigarettes and speaks in jagged bursts. Dad seems to placate his daughter to keep the peace, even at the expense of others. That includes the titular Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), a psychology student who’s marrying her musician fiance, Sidney (Television on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe), in a multicultural ceremony. The sisters reunite giddily as Rachel’s best friend, Emma (Anisa George), stands guard, but old resentments soon fester.

Demme works from a script from first-time screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of director Sidney. Demme and Lumet, aided by Declan Quinn’s “you are there” cinematography, capture the intimacy and dynamic of a family crippled by a tragedy at Kym’s hand years earlier. Paul keeps calling it “an accident,” almost downplaying the heinous situation. Rachel plays the older sister/student card, analyzing matters. Mother Abby (Debra Winger) isn’t here for much, seemingly having cut herself away years ago to cope, to the point where Carol handles the “mom” duties for the wedding. Most remain willing to forgive - except Kym herself. Hathaway’s monologues reveal deep self-hatred that no amount of drugs can help her escape. Even in Kym’s furtive, manic smoking, Hathaway’s eyes convey pain and loss.

While spending time with the Buchman dysfunction borders on unpleasant, Demme and Lumet mostly justify the excursion. Only Abby remains a cypher, whether on purpose or because the character needs additional development. We see Winger so rarely on screen. We want more.

Fortunately, the movie isn’t all bittersweet melancholy: After all, it is called Rachel Getting Married. Even with Kym’s awkward speech, the rehearsal dinner brings joy: Paul welcomes Sidney’s family into his (teasing the older brother with the video camera is a nice, genuine touch), as friends and family who so love Rachel and Sidney blend. The wedding itself is very personal; the cake-cutting ceremony, with its array of hands, may contain the most moving moment of the movie. Only the omnipresent music becomes too much, an undercurrent but a lingering one. When Kym yells for the musicians to stop, she’s likely echoing many moviegoers’ thoughts.

Rachel Getting Married ends with a lovely image of the bride the morning after. Our final shot of Kym isn’t as idyllic: She’s returning to rehab. Still, Hathaway paints her own lovely picture, one of a woman learning to consider others and love herself.