She puts the FUN in Dysfunctional Family
I really love everything about this movie. I love that Anne Hathaway proves that she isn’t just Princess Diaries (also I have a proper sexual crush on her, just in general), and can handle a complex character. She plays Kym , out of rehab for the weekend to attend her sisters wedding. The film is about this wedding with this family, with their history. It has all of the ingredients of a stuffy melodrama, but writer Jenny Lumet and director Jonathan Demme find their way around some potential pitfalls. Instead of making a claustrophobic picture where we’re trapped with 5 or 6 characters in a house talking about the tragedies of their lives,, the film is incredibly free. To say that Demme’s camera meanders would be incorrect. The cinematography feels organic, it is interested in everyone it sees, and it follows them for a while, leaving behind just the main family. There is an extended sequence at the rehearsal dinner, where character after character stand up and talk for a moment. Probably 15 or so of them. Most of these characters never speak again. But this is not wasted time. The movie is about the largeness of family and a wedding and about the dynamic of all these people being gathered at one time. There are musicians constantly playing in the background, and they provide the film’s score. There are absolutely emotional moments, and dramatic payoffs, but they aren’t where you would expect them. They sneak up on you, and the film earns them. This movie just feels true.
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