This review originally appeared during the Toronto Film Festival. Rachel Getting Married opens in select cities today.
Jonathan Demme’s first fiction film since his 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidatee (and only his second non-documentary in ten years), Rachel Getting Married is orchestrated like an extraordinarily intimate work of direct cinema. Working from a script by Jenny Lumet (daughter of Sidney), Demme shot the dysfunctional family drama on a combination of grainy, handheld 35mm and consumer video––without rehearsal, with a huge ensemble cast made up of actors and musicians, with a soundtrack consisting entirely of diegetic music performed either on or just off camera by the likes of Robyn Hitchcock, New Orleans jazz saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr, TV On The Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe (who also plays the key role of the man Rachel is getting married to) and sometime American Idol Tamyra Grey. For a film featuring not only said reality competition castoff but a tour de force performance from a two-time Teen Choice Award nominee, it’s almost unfathomably dark and emotionally tough. It’s essentially a Dogme 95 film directed by Robert Altman, which will be a frightening proposition for some, and something akin to cinematic ecstasy for others. It’s the latter for me.
…Read more
Rosemarie DeWitt is best known for her role as Don Draper’s beatnik-artist-in-residence Midge on AMC’s hit show Mad Men, but her turn as Rachel in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married is already getting rave reviews. She’s been acting since 2001 and has done a lot of television work, but after this performance she may be ready to turn the corner and move into film.
Read the full interview after the break to find out how she got the role, and what it was like working with Anne Hathaway and Jonathan Demme.
…Read more
