For the first time in my life on Wednesday afternoon, I wanted a wedding cake. Not the wedding itself, just the cake. You see, the cake in Rachel Getting Married is a deep blue Indian elephant, decorated with little white flowers, as if the brush of an Indian miniature painter had conjured it up. It is an incredible creation that steals the screen during its brief minutes of fame. If I ever do get married, I intend have this cake – a quote cake. However I will not ever, under any circumstances, wear a purple sari. I depend on you to hold me to that.
Films structured around weddings don’t usually grab me, as they more often than not seem to be stomach churning romantic comedies that use the wedding as a device to get a whole lot of mismatched people in the one room. Thankfully, Rachel Getting Married is in a different league; more Monsoon Wedding than My Best Friend’s Wedding. Kim (Anne Hathaway) returns from rehab for her sister Rachel’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding. Kim hasn’t been home for nine months, hasn’t met Rachel’s husband to be Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe), and to a certain extent, hasn’t been included in the plans for the wedding. This, and the unresolved familial issues between Rachel, Kim and their parents over the death of a younger brother give the film its emotional core. The family is a sprawling, multicultural and musical. Paul (Bill Irwin) is over protective and Abby (Debra Winger) struggles with the idea of family. She is distant and clearly finds the expectations of her daughters difficult. In the end she leaves the wedding early to fly to Washington for a business meeting in the morning. Her absence is accentuated by stepmother Carol’s (Anna Deveare Smith) warmth. Carol remains kind even when she is being pushed to the outer, and is clearly the heart of the home.
You can see hints of Jonathan Demme’s previous films in the psychological struggles, the jealousies and attempts at manipulation that occur between the characters. It’s gentler than the mind games of Hannibal Lecter, however Demme’s skill at teasing out the way people push each other creates a wonderful tension. Not only do Rachel and Kim have unresolved sibling rivalries, Kim and Rachel’s best friend Emma (Anisa George) jostle for the position of maid of honour, Kim believing that as Rachel’s sister, the role should be hers.
This Kim/Emma struggle is particularly poignant. Right from the moment Kim arrives home and bursts into the room where Emma is pinning Rachel’s dress, Emma’s reservations about Kim are clear. As Kim and Rachel babble about the past, Emma looks on with a wary expression. Later, at the rehearsal dinner, Emma begins her speech by explaining that she has known Rachel her whole life, hinting that although they aren’t related, she knows Rachel better than Kim. The other guests fit in around the nervy ensemble, providing the film with its light. Sidney’s musician friends play constantly throughout the film, in a doodling background of random improvisation that I found hilarious. This is probably a personal thing though, and those of you without friends who play improvised world music/jazz might just find it annoying without the funny.
The mobile camera and the understated performances give the film a cinema verite feel. It’s like being dropped in the middle of a real family. At moments the scene in the car after Paul and Carol pick Kim up slips into documentary-style casualness. The camera rides in the car with them, mostly watching Kim as she banters with her father, only turning to the front where Carol is driving when Carol asks, ‘What’s nachtmare? I don’t know that one.’ ‘It’s a nightmare so bad it’s in German’, Paul reveals. The characters and their relations with each other emerge through small moments like this. Throwaway comments, asides and in-jokes pervade the naturalistic script, creating tensions and then moving on, so that the audience is only shown hints of the greater story. This is what keeps you watching, wanting to know more about these people, who, with their enigmatic pettiness and hidden anger are both familiar and strange.
