Ah, the holiday season. Holidays and family time can be a blessing and a reason to grit your teeth and start stocking up on alcohol. There’s always a lot of pressure to be merry, festive and loving towards family you either see regularly, or only at holiday time. Though sometimes too much family time can ensure you’re having a bit more brandied egg nog than need be, it can resemble the family scenes in Home Alone. Hopefully nobody utters ‘You’re such a disease!’ to your face though..

Whether it be a religious holiday or special event though – films are either comedic in the way they approach this tension (think Home Alone, Four Holidays, Elf) or there are movies such as The Family Stone, Margot at the Wedding, and now Rachel Getting Married that give a truly confronting and raw illustration of such an occasion.

Rachel Getting Married is as far from Anne Hathaway’s other work, so cleanse your mind of her roles in The Princess Diaries, or The Devil Wears Prada. Here, she plays Kym, who has gained leave from rehab just for her sister Rachel’s (played beautifully by Rosemarie DeWitt wedding, and is as pasty and unkempt as you’ve ever seen her. Heck, I don’t think she has on any lip balm during the movie. Which means the performance you see from her is completely without artifice or gloss (pardon the pun). Its completely raw, and emotive. She isn’t a likeable character; but who said lead protagonists have to be? The more flawed she is, and the more that unravels through confrontation with her family – the more all the transgressions and mistakes of the past come to the surface.

Another aspect that makes this indie film a stand-out is that its shot entirely in a handy-cam style; as if the film were following the events of Rachel’s wedding weekend, shot by an amateur wedding photographer. Don’t mistake this as a Cloverfield or Blair Witch Project style affair, you won’t get any motion sickness here. It does cut roughly between scenes of the wedding parties (pre and post wedding) with Kym’s narcotics anonymous meetings – but that only lends itself to the fly-on-the-wall atmosphere that lets the viewer be an extra guest to the wedding festivities. And its brutal. The viewer is privy to some intensely private moments between the family, and so are family and friends of the bride and groom – there is no escape from the unpredictability that is Kym.

To say more about what unfolds throughout the movie would truly spoil it – there is no twist, there is no triumph – just truth in this family, and truth doesn’t always equal sunshine and rainbows. That’s what makes this film so gut-wrenchingly beautiful.

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