"Rachel Getting Married"
Directed by: Jonathan Demme

Starring: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Tunde Adebimpe, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger

Rated: R (for adult situations, adult language) Running Time: 114 minutes Best Suited For: deep drama demons

Least Suited For: the lighthearted

"Rachel Getting Married" is a powerful, significant film for lovers of deep, serious drama. It is a very good film, but hardly a film for everybody's tastes. It is both an uncomfortable and a conceivably disturbing film about a dysfunctional family dealing with a reunion with their daughter, who's in rehab, on the eve of her sister's wedding.

Director Jonathan Demme, who began his career as an indie director working for Roger Corman (and who went on to direct such important films as "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia") has left Hollywood gloss and glamour far behind in "Rachel Getting Married." In terms of in-your-face emotion and utterly realistic tensions (those minute differences between what's possible and what's probable), both Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet have crafted a raw, heartfelt and potent film.

"Rachel Getting Married" is a story not so much about dysfunctional people as deeply wounded people who won't or can't allow each other the time to heal. Anne Hathaway plays Kym, who's on furlough from a long stint in rehab. She's a recovering addict, and her big sister's wedding is hardly a fitting place for Day One back in reality. Especially in Kym's reality.

If you're familiar with Hathaway for her breezy roles in films like "The Devil Wears Prada," "Get Smart" or "Ella Enchanted," you may be dumbstruck just to realize the depths of Hathaway's performance as a young woman haunted by a tragedy that preys upon the entire family.

Kym's sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) is cautiously loving. But look into the eyes of the superficially effervescent Rachel. Anyone who's attended a family wedding understands the kind of ticking time bomb that awaits the unprepared. One can hear the eggshells crackling with every movement, with every awkward pause, with every unintentional barb.

Most remarkable about this drama is understanding how any missteps might have so easily plunged the film into disarray, into that kind of syrupy melodrama that simply rings as untrue. How easily script or cast or direction could have mired the film in morose or overindulgent drivel. Yet "Rachel" remains steadfastly true to life. Kym isn't perfect; Rachel isn't perfect; her father and stepmother aren't perfect—and when Kym's birth mother stops by (a necessarily under-utilized Debra Winger), she's not perfect either. One senses that these people are trying to love each other, they simply don't know how.

And, meanwhile, the prenuptial time bomb continues to tick.

Remarkably—cinematically speaking—the wedding itself is the yin to the family's painful yang. Rachel is about to marry a black musician (Tunde Adebimpe) who remains nobly Sidney Poitier-esque (a la "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"); he quietly provides a calming presence when so many lesser men might have gone screaming into the night.

The festivities slowly gather momentum. Thankfully, there are no bigoted uncles standing by the punchbowl, no unnecessary subplots to fan the embers—rather, the multicultural cheer that seems to radiate just beyond reach is a necessary distraction from Kym's descent into inner turmoil. One could easily surmise that, without Kym's presence, Rachel's might have been the best cinematic wedding ever.

But confrontations do occur, of course, and escalate—and just when you thing you're about to drown in this family's despair, Rachel gets married. This isn't necessarily an "ah ha" moment—because one does not infer that all will live happily ever after—although the moment provides the necessary exhalation. Insanity's reprieve. It's perfect Hollywood precision in a quintessentially non-Hollywood production.

The non-drama lover—those of us who perhaps loved "Knocked Up" but hated "Friends With Money"; loved "Liar, Liar" but hated "To Kill a Mockingbird"—probably won't appreciate "Rachel Getting Married." It's serious theater. It's about hurting people in unpleasant situations. It's real life, uglier than perhaps our own but still brimming with potential for redemption. And isn't that what great drama is all about?