If Rachel Getting Married suffers from one thing it’s that it feels a little too much like we’re watching a family wedding unfold. The very documentary-style of directing employed by Jonathan Demme, whose last film was actually a documentary, comes across like homemade footage, or at the very least like one of those A&E reality shows, but better and not as grating. This movie captures all the little clichés and clap-traps of wedding ceremonies, but at the same there’s a powerful dramatic story swirling about anchored by a no-holds-barred, career changing performance by Anne Hathaway. Plus, any movie with Fab 5 Freddy, even in a cameo is all right by me.

Taking place over a single, tumultuous weekend, the Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) of Rachel Getting Married is a psychiatrist in training about to marry a music producer named Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe). Kim (Hathaway), a drug addict that’s spent a decade in and out of rehab, is Rachel’s sister and she’s just gotten out for the weekend to attended Rachel’s nuptials. Kim’s presence immediately rocks the boat as her bleak outlook and self-deprecating one-liners tend to be a disruptive element no matter the situation. But Kim’s nihilism starts to wear on Rachel as family secrets are dug up and brought to light again, and Kim tries to deal with her substantive role in how everything unfolded.

Screenwriter Jenny Lumet, daughter of filmmaker Sidney, does an impress job of painting this family in incredible detail, drawing them with a lot of emotion and complexity. Kim is both identifiable and annoying; Rachel is both understanding and self-centred. Also they’re perfectly rational and reasonable depending on the situation and both Hathaway and DeWitt can sell you on the moment. Aside from the physical resemblance, the two feel and act like sisters, which makes their loggerheads moments seem all too painfully real and believable. Perhaps it was the voyeuristic way the film was shot, but several occasions in the film is the sorrow, regret, anger and jubilation a tangible atmosphere created on screen.

A large part of the film’s success in creating realism is Hathaway’s skill at playing an emotional shell game with Kim. The character’s thoughts and feelings are all over the place, one minute lamenting the way everyone’s looking at her and the next complaining that no one’s paying attention to her. It’s a completely polar dichotomy, but it feels genuine and Hathaway’s gift is she can make Kim both attractive and repellent, often within a fraction of a second between them. Kim is not a very likeable character, but oddly you want to like her. But that’s not to say that Rachel’s very likeable either. The subtext of their animosity is understood even before we get the full details of the family’s past.

But the key to keep this film grounded in the real is the Demme shot it. Like someone walking around with a video camera and constantly being in the right place at the right time, the film always feels both insightful and intrusive. The film doesn’t quite feel staged although occasionally it does, but for the most part it feels like we’re being allowed to see inside this deeply troubled family and some of their most private moments though we have no right. Lighting is minimal, that is to say if there is lighting, and the only music in the film is generated on screen through people nearby playing instruments. So many visceral moments are created, whether it’s in the shock of certain scenes or the tediousness of all the cutesy wedding rituals.

Rachel Getting Married is a tribute to minimalist filmmaking in seeing what power a movie can have when armed only with good actors and a decent script. Most of the cast is unknowns and character actors, which adds to the natural flow of the story, even the goddess Hathaway is de-glamed in favour of look that’s somewhere between letting herself go and heroin chic. But like any good story, your attention is grabbed not by the details, but by the action being told and the comfortable knowledge that you have no idea where it’s leading, nor do you care. Even sitting through numerous, similar sounding, overly generous toasts to the marrying couple is a ritual of endurance, waiting for the next shoe to drop. A beautifully acted and made movie that will leave you emotionally satisfied.