rachel getting married

>> I was pretty sure it couldn’t be done. But (sit down for it) Anne Hathaway actually can act.

Hathaway finally sheds her innocent, princess go-to for the dark, Pieces of April-esque lead in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married.

Of course, there’s still a lot of princess in narcissistic Kym Buchanan, who gets in plenty of painful, self-absorbed moments, be it using her wedding toast as an opportunity to make amends as part of her 12-step program or throwing a passive-aggressive tantrum when she finds out she isn’t her sister’s maid of honor.

While Hathaway begins to lapse into her usual sweet-self towards the film’s conclusion, and even if she can’t quite manage to shake her trademark, nasally voice, she shows greater acting range than Princess Diaries II: Royal Engagement ever suggested was possible.

Rachel Getting Married follows drug-addict Kym on her weekend home for her older sister’s wedding. Inevitably, it comes out that Kym has a secret darker than her thick, black eyeliner and the emotional fall-out between the sisters, and the rest of the family, ranges all over. Added to the already slightly awkward tension as the bride and grooms’ families try to get to know one each other, and you have a recipe for plenty of theatrics, if not full out disaster.

Demme’s choice to shoot the entire film on a hand-held camera is inescapably gimmicky, but it works here. The wedding video style makes Rachel Getting Married very personal and sincere.

In fact, the movie as a whole feels just like a big family gathering, every bit as heartwarming and cringe worthy as a big Thanksgiving weekend or family reunion. Demme captures the fun and tension of family with endearing precision. Unfortunately, Rachel Getting Married manages to capture all aspects of family, and that means several scenes of toasts and family games that drag on and lose momentum.

Rosemarie deWitt is a beautiful, backyard bride as Rachel. She subtly introduces viewers to a whole other world of suffering prompted by Kym’s drug addiction. But whatever animosities the sister’s bear towards one another, deWitt simultaneously demonstrates a great deal of genuine compassion and love for Kym.

The wedding itself is unusual but beautiful, from deWitt’s golden-crème sari wedding dress to the blue, elephant wedding cake to the giddy, musical reception that ranges all over the Buchanan’s moist, green Connecticut backyard.

Highlights: DeWitt’s subtly perfect Anthropologie wardrobe, the George Clooney look-alike best man, Tunde Adebimpe’s acapella, wedding vow cover of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend,” and deWitt’s heartbreakingly tender last lines to Hathaway (“I love you, baby”).

georgiana of devonshire

>> At first glance, Saul Dibb’s The Duchess looks like nothing more than a carbon copy of Sofia Coppolla’s Marie Antoinette.

Both period dramas follow beautiful, 18th century noblewomen as they frolic in outrageous dresses and pastel-colored wigs, have illicit love affairs with military men, and desperately try to conceive sons.

But The Duchess, which offers Keira Knightley many opportunities to showcase her iconic pout and practice her breathy gasps, succeeds in the very way that Marie Antoinette fails. While Coppolla’s film is very attractive, with its rich cinematography and eclectic music, it is ultimately weak as a story, with an uncertain theme and no obvious plot. Meanwhile, the far more political Duchess is simultaneously historical and a narrative, telling the compelling and often disturbing story of Georgiana’s cultural entrapment.

Early in the movie, Georgiana cleverly describes her complicated clothing as the only means by which she is allowed to express herself. As Georgiana becomes more entrapped by the power of the Duke and her station, her costumes (which earned The Duchess a much deserved honor for costume design) become more and more fantastic, as she desperately tries to demonstrate control over the one area of her life that allows her any power.


Note: I wrote this little blurb some time ago after seeing The Duchess in theaters, but it never made its way onto my blog. Here it is now... several months delayed.

beautiful bathrooms