In cinema, getting personal is generally considered a good thing — what would the whole indies/Sundance experience be without it? But some films are so intimate it hurts. "Rachel Getting Married" is like that.
As its title suggests, this is a wedding movie, with the usual trappings of the family gathering, family relationship dynamics and — increasingly typical of the genre — family secrets rolling out of the closet.
Director Jonathan Demme tailored the film into a faux documentary complete with the (expertly) jittery hand-held camera wielded by cinematographer Declan Quin. The look and texture is that of a home video, enhanced by the hand-crafted, Indian-themed wedding (the cake is shaped like an elephant), but the resemblance to reality stops there. In real-life wedding videos, people pull out their best smiles and take the trouble to be nice — in "Rachel Getting Married" the characters dispense with conventional politeness in favor of brutal honesty. They strike where it hurts and go at each other's jugulars, and in some scenes, you'll be glad they're in the living room and not in the kitchen among the steak knives.