Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 10/9/08 Section: Student Culture

Media Credit: Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Anne Hathaway as Kym, Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel, Bill Irwin as Paul and Debra Winger as Abby in a scene from Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married."

On Sept. 23, I went to the press screening of "Rachel Getting Married" at Camera 12 off Second Street in San Jose, a few blocks from SJSU.

The movie was filmed using a digital video camera, which was a style recently popularized in Hollywood but well known to the art film and alternative film industry for at least 10 years.

Many art film directors use video because it is cheaper. Hollywood uses it because it's cool.

Somewhere in the Connecticut suburbs, a family is about to celebrate the wedding of a popular daughter, Rachel, but the family's estranged recovering addict daughter, Kym, returns, causing a storm of emotions played out in a rain-soaked wedding party.

The film is set several days before and up to the wedding, introducing Kym, (Anne Hathaway from "Princess Diaries"), who has just been released from a drug rehab clinic after nine months of sobriety.

Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt of "Afterschool") is getting married into a musical family of Jamaican descent known to the family for years.

Her husband-to-be Sidney, (Tunde Adebimpe of "The First Three Lives of Stewart Hornsley") is a gentle giant.

Rachel and Kym's parents divorced as the result of a dysfunctional marriage partly stemming from their daughter's drug problems, which apparently started when she was a teenager.

At 16, Kym accidentally killed her little brother while she was high while driving and her car fell off a bridge into a lake and she escaped but he drowned.

She had been in rehab places ever since, and given her crass attitude about family, would rather stay there than face them.

Abby (Debra Winger of "Terms of Endearment") and Paul (Bill Irwin of "Across the Universe") are the divorced and dysfunctional parents.

They've remarried and are on edge because of the wedding. Paul is obsessed with making sure Kym stays out of trouble, while Abby is in denial and stays back observing arguments between the sisters.

Andre (Jerome LePage of "Analyze That") is a family friend who is also a recovering addict, and he is evidently Kym's boyfriend. He acts as a buffer between some of the characters.

Continued...

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