This time it’s not a romantic comedy, far from it…

Rachel getting married

   Kim, a young addict ex-model, is going back home from her rehab to be there on her sister’s wedding. All the family, friends and fiancé relatives are there, in the family house, to this huge event. Kim feels lonely and in discrepancy with this atmosphere of joy. With his parents and his sister in particular, the young woman is very rude and almost jealous when she hasn’t all the attention she expected.

   Like in the Danish movie Festen, the drama can only happen in the middle of all the family - without the audience, Kim’s repentance speech would not have the same intensity and the same impact. She doesn’t really want to repent toward her father or her sister, but just tries to draw the attention of all the guests, because she needs it.
   During three days, Kim takes advantage of the wedding to try to rebuild herself after the rehab treatment, in a kind of an accelerate process. This is not a film about Rachel, not a film about the wedding; these elements are simple pretexts and their presence in the title behaves like a deception.
The beginning of the film is also based on that idea of trompe-l’oeil: a lot of unidentified characters, a big place with lots of corners and rooms, and a camera which follows the protagonists from behind without ever preceding them.

   The film would not be the same without the incessant world music which accompanies almost all the sequences and gives the film a such special atmosphere, between happiness (of the wedding) and despair (of the family). The family is white, the stepfamily is black, the wedding is Indian and the rest of the guests represent all the nationalities and genres. More than a simple psychological drama, Rachel getting married is a melting pot movie, quite messy but deep and moving.

Rachel getting married, by Jonathan Demme, with Anne Hathaway. 2009.

Comments

[stacey]

I watched this movie on an airplane and basically sobbed the whole way through. Your analysis is very coherent and I truly love your last statement. Very intuitive.

Some corrections: family house, can only happen, Kim takes advantage, without ever, gives the film.