Amodini's Book Reviews

Book Reviews and Recommendations

Rachel getting married

Written By: amodini - Nov• 17•08

rachel2 Rachel getting married is about Kym, Rachel’s sister, and her complicated relationship with her family. It’s about mental baggage; the stuff we carry around in our heads. Kym’s elder sister Rachel is getting married, and Kym is a recovering drug addict, out from her rehab center for a few days to attend the wedding. It is a pretty complicated family structure – Rachel and Kym’s parents are divorced and now married to different people, Rachel is marrying an African-American musician, who comes with lots of family, culture and music, and Kym, an ex-model is an outwardly snaky, inwardly insecure woman, at the center of a deep, dark family tragedy, which no-one can forget.

This film often feels like a personal movie video, with all the family huddled together, making toasts – some polished, some awkward, and dragging over the familial bits. But there is also a lot of family drama, because guess what – Kym is not the only one with hurt feelings. And while the characters are not saintly at all; all of them have nasty streaks like the rest of us mortal folks, you feel for each one of them – they get under your skin. It’s not about who’s right or who’s wrong, it’s about life.

Performances are great all around – I especially felt for Kym and her father, played by Bill Irwin. The screenplay is nice with the details, feels a little “draggy” at times – but probably necessary to give the film the whole “it’s a family spat” kind of a feel.

rachel1

A point of interest in the film, for me, is that Rachel’s wedding has an Indian theme. So the food is Indian, and the wedding cake look’s like a Maharajah’s Indian elephant. The bride and the bridesmaids wear beautiful silk saris (not very correctly though), and the younger men wear kurtas and sherwanis – the groom wearing a heavy brocade one. I didn’t get why they would go for the desi scheme, and no one actually expresses any affinity to the Indian culture, so that sort of went unexplained.

Nice film. It ends on a high note, but it is a sad story – you’ll shed a few tears.

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