I don’t usually fall for it when an actor or actress deglams – when they get scruffy and ugly onscreen in hopes of winning an award. Yet Anne Hathaway redeems the practice in Rachel Getting Married. Hathaway doesn’t really hide her beauty here, as, say, Angelina Jolie did in A Mighty Heart or Charlize Theron did in Monster. Instead, she damages it. As Kym, an emotional dervish of a drug addict who gets a temporary leave from rehab to attend her sister’s wedding, Hathaway is pale and gaunt, like a freeze-dried version of herself. Self-deprecating about her past – “I am Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening,” she says at one point – Kym is nonetheless sensitive to any perceived slight. Often, she’s looking for one. A mixture of shame, defensiveness and terror rarely leaves her panicked eyes. You get the sense that selfishness and narcissism were an integral part of Kym’s personality even before drugs got involved. Hathaway gives each scene a prickly edge – you want to strangle Kym even as you pity her. She seems unconcerned with either winning the audience’s sympathy or creating a despicable antiheroine. She’s simply living on screen. From director Jonathan Demme, who nearly overdoses on bohemian coolness in the wedding scenes.
