Been too long since your bickering relatives last inflicted fresh emotional scars or your caterwauling in-laws had you surrounded?
Then there's the next best thing: Rachel Getting Married, a drama so hell-bent on agonized, squirm-in-your-seat realism, you'll hope Martin Short parachutes in as a zany wedding planner.
No such luck.
Instead, though, we do get a volcanic performance from Anne Hathaway as Kym, a repeat rehabber sprung for the wedding of her older, straight-arrow sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt).
Make no mistake: Hathaway's a lock for an Academy Award nomination. A study in needy, nervy, unsettled narcissism and negative-zone energy, she may not lighten the mood, but her caustic, live-wire velocity at least juices the duller goings-on.
If you hadn't guessed already, director Jonathan Demme's latest isn't so much enjoyed or savoured as appreciated, even admired, for its skill and daring. Film aficionados and art-house regulars should embrace it.
People anticipating My Best Friend's Wedding may run howling out of the theatre.
As soon as Kym arrives -- chauffeured from her latest treatment clinic to her family's rambling country home by her doting father (Bill Irwin) -- she all but hijacks the nuptials with one self-loathing stunt after another.
Among them: having sex with the best man in the basement, crashing a car, delivering a cringe-inducing speech at a rehearsal dinner and, finally, coming to blows with her chilly, divorced mother (Debra Winger).
It's an unmissable -- if immensely unlikable -- powerhouse turn from the former Princess Diaries starlet, who, like Halle Berry and Charlize Theron, establishes herself here as a babe with serious chops.
Demme, whose eclectic credits range from Something Wild to Silence of the Lambs to Philadelphia, has spent the past few years making documentaries about rock icons (Neil Young: Heart of Gold) and U.S. presidents (Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains).
Those experiences clearly helped shape Rachel Getting Married, with its hand-held high-def camerawork, free-flow acting and fly-on-the-wall aesthetic.
Demme -- and likewise the audience -- dives head-long into this imploding clan's tortured dynamics, mirroring Kym's own harried, jittery state of mind.
Like her, the film is moody, alert and seething.
That is, anyway, until the final 15 minutes, at which point Demme strangely drifts from Kym to the tender but boring nuptials between Rachel and her husband-to-be Sydney.
The damage Kym has caused is never forgotten -- her black eye is a badge of dishonour -- but it leaves you wondering if the film would have been better served if Demme hadn't let his gentler, more humane instincts (towards joy, harmony and wall-to-wall music) prevail.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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