Venice and Toronto. Rachel Getting Married.

"For my money, [Rachel Getting Married] is a case of a great director redeeming a slightly uneven script (by Jenny 'Daughter of Sidney' Lumet), which is most interesting when exploring the dynamic between two sisters - one who's negotiated a fragile rapport with her family (Rosemarie DeWitt) and the other (Anne Hathaway), a recovering addict, who's returning to the clan on bad terms," writes Ben Kenigsberg for Time Out Chicago.

"[A]bove all, it's a supremely inclusive film. Whatever contrivances it falls back on, the movie sends you out on a high."

"It sounds like a carbon copy of last year's Margot at the Wedding (bitter pill returns home in time to spoil sister's nuptials), but where that film was small, pale, and poisonously acerbic (and appallingly funny, I thought), Rachel sprawls with music and forgiveness, extending gentle humanism and multi-culti chic to each of its characters," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "In other words, it's a Jonathan Demme movie, and the first recognizable such animal in a number of years."

"I can see how it might been seen as some as a less pretentious sister of Margot, but only because it deals with characters that are, well, less pretentious," writes Peter Knegt.

"[T]he film belongs to Anne Hathaway," writes Wendy Ide in the London Times. "It's remarkable that, given how deeply unsympathetic and self-obsessed her character is for much of the film, Hathaway manages to make her so likeable. It's the kind of wedding - all mawkish self-written vows and inappropriate use of Neil Young - that would drive the most saintly guest to drink and drugs. The urge to self-destruct in a rain of pills and vodka constantly flickers across Hathaway's face, and the camera captures everything in her huge, bruised eyes and angry storm of hair."

"But Rachel Getting Married is hardly a one-woman show; Bill Irwin has a few great moments as Kym and Rachel's father; DeWitt manages to capture both sibling rivalry and sisterly compassion, petty jealousy and rough-hewn forgiveness; as Kym's mother, Debra Winger, much like Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People, plays a person both cut off from her feelings and captured in the grip of them," writes James Rocchi at Cinematical. "On the groom's side, [Tunde] Adabimpe is stalwart as Sidney, while Mather Zickel gives a funny, charming, loose performance as best man Kieran, who has more in common with Kym than just a big role in the ceremony."

"Demme pays tribute to Altman with the style of real-life over-talking, silence, and open ends that he has never really emulated before combined with his personal aesthetic of music, wild but loving characters, and unexpected performances that change careers," writes David Poland.

"I won't claim that Rachel Getting Married is a perfect film, but that doesn't matter to me in the slightest," writes Chris Stults of the Wexner Center. "There is such an abundance in this film that to say that two or three tiny moments don't work or seem overly written is miserly. And this is a film that fosters forgiveness."

"Cinema is littered with stories of addiction and family dysfunction - movies like Sherrybaby and The Celebration were bandied about in comparison to this no-frills, kitchen-sink melodrama - but few are as warm, incisive, and emotionally devastating as this one," writes Scott Tobias. Also at the AV Club, Noel Murray: "[S]o much about this movie is so goddamned beautiful that I was pretty much a wreck by the last half hour."

Updates, 9/10: "[I]it's hard to overstate Demme's achievement with this powerful narrative," blogs Eric Kohn at Jaman.

Noah Forrest talks with producer Neda Armian at Movie City News.

Update, 9/17: Kevin Kelly talks with Demme and Hathaway for the SpoutBlog.

Update, 9/18: And Kevin Kelly talks with Rosemarie DeWitt.

Posted by dwhudson at September 9, 2008 1:44 PM