Jonathan Demme introduced his latest film, “Rachel Getting Married,” tonight along with screenwriter Jenny Lumet (the daughter of director Sydney Lumet). The film comes out this weekend in limited release so we should spit out a review now, but… We don’t really have time for a full blown examination of the film, but suffice to say we found the its gritty (butt-ugly DV) cinema verite (takes adjusting to; we felt seasick like “Cloverfield”) and it’s mostly irredeemable and unlikable protagonist (a good, but overrated Anne Hathaway) something of a struggle to tolerate. Altman-esque in its clipped scenes, overlapping-dialogue and sometimes hard to keep up with plot (only cause you can’t make out what people are saying at times), the film is a little emotionally exhausting, but not in the best of ways. One can assume half the reason it was shot in its hand-held documentary style is to capture not only the madness and energy of wedding preparation and the equal measure of Hathaway’s rehab, 12-stepping character, but it was a little much.
Hathaway will probably get nominated cause she has a few affecting scenes of emotion that are the hallmark of Oscar highlight clips, but her uber self-involved, trainwreck-y character is such a aggravating mess, you just want to slap some sense into her. Revolving around the 72-odd hours around a wedding, (Rachel’s sister played by a competent Rosemarie DeWitt), Hathaway’s character is the little sister – a hurricane; a blunt egoistic personality from hell who threatens to ruin her sister’s day at every single self-obsessed turn. It’s extremely hard to feel sympathetic for the character and for us it made the movie a really tough sell. People around us kind of seemed to love it, and while there were some tough and honest moments a lot of it felt artless and tedious. More tomorrow. We will admit that TV On The Radio’s lead singer Tunde Adebimpe’s (who play’s DeWitt’s fiance Sydney) stirring acapella rendition of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” is rather moving. Oh yeah, British singer Robyn Hitchcock is in the film too and performs, “America” and “Up To Our Neck.” Roger Corman and Fab Five Freddy make cameos at the wedding.
In the introduction, Lumet makes it sound that this film is intensely personal for her which makes our heart go out to her, because if we had a younger sibling like Hathaway’s we would have strangled them long ago. [ed. Stupid DailyMotion wouldn’t upload our video last night, so we’re moving to YouTube that seems more .avi friendly]