BTW, I agree that by the time of a wedding, both families will have long gotten used to the inter-racial thing (and any family members who objected would likely not be there). I obviously can’t speak for Ms. Longworth, but what I would say (and I think she would too) is not that plausibility REQUIRES that there be some sort of Big Conversation about it. It’s more that it becomes another signifier of how much this family prizes post-60s “Unconventionality.” In that sense, the very fact that there IS no Big Conversation is exactly right, and everything else Bobo in the movie reinforces that.

Maybe the color issue was muted because Dad (Bill Irwin) married an African American women (Anna Deveare Smith).

My favorite part of the movie is the rehearsal dinner, and one of my favorite things about it is that after Kym speaks, the scene continues. The moment is gone, but you can tell from their post-Kym laughter that everyone wishes they could bring it back even as they know they can’t. To me this feels exactly like the melancholy that follows every such bubble. I recognize it. The bubble is fragile, but it’s not fake.

Movies are fake, and Charlie Kaufman has nothing on Demme in the synecdoche department, but there’s truth in this fictional construction.

Look: it’s more than possible that there are race-related tensions within these families. The movie doesn’t explore them because THAT’S NOT WHAT THIS FILM IS ABOUT. I think people are just having cognitive dissonance about seeing multiculturalism presented in a film that is not principally (or even marginally) about multiculturalism. As for the saris and the multi-ethnic musical performances, I think Karina nailed it: the Buchmans are rich and can simply afford to adorn a wedding with fun, quirky touches (and come on, wouldn’t you like to attend a wedding like this one? everyone was having a great time). This discussion feels a bit like McCain raising a stink about Obama’s pig-lipstick line: focusing on something marginal (and misunderstanding that marginal thing) instead of getting into the meat of the issue.

If film critics aren’t ready to accept a casually interracial wedding ceremony as “plausible,” they might as well join in the chorus of racist voices asking “who is the real Barack Obama?”

And by the way– I thought the multiculturalism in Rachel Getting Married was cloying. No, I didn’t have the problem with the idea of a black man and a white woman marrying to be contrived. From having been to a lot of weddings the past five years, I know that is more and more common these days. This is was got on my nerves during the wedding sequences: the combination Robyn Hitchcock, a folksy string group, a garage band playing ‘Here Come the Bride’, saris, acapella singing, a hip-hop dance throw-down, and a fully loaded Brazilian Drum Band. It was too kitschy. And I probably would have given it all a pass if Demme hadn’t lingered so much on the festivities. Yes, it’s a movie about a wedding, but after awhile, it started to feel like a glorified home-movie about Demme’s eclectic sensibilities.

However, I will admit that the acting in Rachel Getting Married is great, and the cinematography was exceptional.

And while it’s true that, as you say, “nobody can deal with [Kym's] brand of actual nonconformity, her inability to simmer down to normal,” it’s hard also to see how they can, and sometimes, even why they ought to. I mean, how would you feel (and I mean the editorial you here, really), if somebody got up at your wedding rehearsal dinner and gave the sort of self-absorbed speech that Hathaway’s Kym does? You might just swallow it for the sake of propriety (I myself had a drunken aunt get up and give a speech about what an obnoxious kid I was at my wedding, and everyone just looked at their glasses; in any case, it wasn’t as if she was wrong…), but you also wouldn’t kindly ascribe it to “nonconformity.” You’d say she was being an inconsiderate pain in the ass.

My own feeling was that the vibe and the cultural mix of the wedding in the film wasn’t terribly different from what I’ve seen at gatherings hosted by affluent people who make their livings in the arts.

And as for me, I’m a socialist.

I don’t know why my personal politics should be an issue here, but I am neither the biggest embracer of liberal ideals, nor a McCain supporter. Sorry.

“Demme is telling us that this family prides itself on its creativity, its liberalism, its openness, its ostentatious rejection of convention.

But of course, this self-styled nonconformity is not only unsustainable, it’s revealed to be totally false.”

So I guess we’re all voting for McCain, then.