Rachel Getting Married Review

There are certain Hollywood stars that cannot escape their real-life personality. It's not that they cannot act, but that our knowledge of their public personas and private lives prevents the leap of faith it takes to believe they are who they say they are. Sometimes they just get too big. And sometimes it's a more subtle problem. Take Tom Cruise for example. If you see Tom Cruise in a film and his character's mingling at an engagement party, most of the audience will be thinking, on some level, "What's Tom Cruise doing at that person's party with all those non-celebrity people there?" and "Why has no one noticed that Tom Cruise is hovering over the canapés?"

Anne Hathaway is also one of those stars. The more uniform and unchanging an image the actor presents in real life, the less we are likely to believe them when they tell us they're a Nazi, say, for the next two hours, or a drug addict. As when Nicole Kidman donned an unattractive nose for The Hours or Charlize Theron uglied-up for Monster or Halle Berry did an unflattering sex scene for Monster's Ball, there's a respect that will automatically be given to Anne Hathaway for enduring a bad haircut for her role as drug addict Kym, who is just out of rehab for the umpteenth time for her sister's wedding weekend.

It's a shtick that works. People will pay good money to see a famous woman look bad. Yet watching Rachel Getting Married, you can't help but think, "Stop being silly Anne, we know you aren't a drug addict - a bad haircut won't fool us" and "What's Anne Hathaway doing messing up her lovely Bambi-like face with pretend car crash make-up?"

Considering the film was marketed as Anne-Hathaway-does-serious-in-messed-up-drug-addict-Oscar-bait-role, with that lovely face close-up on the poster, it's not a surprising reaction. It's directed by Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme so using a well-known starlet as industry blackmail seems unnecessary, particularly as she is royally shown up by newcomer Rosemarie DeWitt as Rachel. Although, not unusually, this marketing is deliberately misleading.

During the time between Anne Hathaway's breakthrough role in Disney's The Princess Diaries and Brokeback Mountain, the actress made a conveniently forgotten film called Havoc. A straight-to-DVD number, it's noted in certain circles for its nude scenes involving her and co-star Bijou Phillips.

In Havoc Anne plays Allison, a bored high-schooler from an affluent suburban family who talks hip-hop gangsta speak when out the house and gets into the sex and drugs culture of LA's Latino gangs for kicks. It's trashy fun, with a semi-serious message. But Rachel Getting Married's Kym is Allison for the awards season - all edginess and vulnerability. Except director Demme throws a big, fat, proper tragedy into the mix to really give her something to cry over.