Bridesmaid revisited

Anne Hathaway crashed more than a wedding in Rachel Getting Married.

It’s one thing to talk to an actor who’s been designated, by both the public and the press, a movie star. It’s something else entirely to see that same celebrity striding toward you at 11am in the morning, in an elegant burgundy evening gown and heels so high they might cause spontaneous nose bleeding. As Anne Hathaway and a semicircular entourage of publicists walk across a cavernous ballroom in Venice’s Hotel Des Bains, she notices the quizzical look on Jonathan Demme’s face. “Oh, this is what I woke up in,” she deadpans, before giggling and giving the director a big hug. “Actually,” Hathaway whispers to us, as the various handlers flit back to the lobby, “I prayed to the movie gods before I went to bed and said, ‘Please let me look fabulous today.’ And this is the outfit they gave me.”

The 25-year-old actor and Demme are preparing to do a press conference later that day, hence the fancy dress. But the film the duo is promoting, which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival that evening, isn’t the kind one would readily associate with red-carpet attire. Yes, Rachel Getting Married does revolve around a wedding, and during the nuptials of the title character (played by Mad Men’s Rosemarie DeWitt), a large ensemble cast gets to show off some lovely saris. But Hathaway’s character, Rachel’s troubled little sister, Kym, is the primary focus of Demme’s family-in-crisis drama, and the starlet spends the majority of the movie sporting dark raccoon eyes and outfits that actually do look slept in. No princess getups or Prada accessories here; Kym’s a recovering addict on a weekend furlough from rehab. While everyone else prepares for the festivities, we get firsthand glimpses of both her rocky past and the personal hell she’s still going through.

“It was the chance to work with Annie that really sold me,” Demme admits. “That and Jenny Lumet’s script were really the only things that could have pulled me away from making documentaries right now. But I’d always liked [Hathaway’s] work, and I just knew she’d bring something extra to it.” Both the director and Hathaway have nothing but praise for the first-time screenwriter, the daughter of legendary director Sidney Lumet. “Jonathan kept saying that her script never followed the rules, which I think is why I responded so strongly to it,” the actor says. “Plus, Jenny has a knack for creating characters who were smart, as opposed to clever. And she refused to make anybody gratuitously likable. Someone once defined well-written drama as something where you’re siding with whomever spoke last. This film has that quality: You hear Kym defend herself, and you go, ‘Right on!’ Then Rachel tears into her, and it’s like, ‘Bam! She nailed you, Kym.’ ”

One scene that seriously tests viewers’ sympathies, however, occurs around the film’s halfway point, when family and friends toast the happy couple during the rehearsal dinner. Kym gets up to pay tribute, and what starts off on the wrong foot (“Hi, I’m Shiva the Destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening”) quickly devolves into one of the more uncomfortably narcissistic sequences in recent memory. “Someone described that speech as ‘wonderfully car-wreckish,’ ” Hathaway says, beaming with joy. “Which is Kym, in a nutshell. But I love that the speech turns into a car wreck in which everyone survives. It ends with her finally acknowledging everyone else in the room: ‘You’re here and we’re all here.’ She’s really trying hard to live in a world that doesn’t fully revolve around her needs.”

Hathaway’s refusal to play Kym as a saccharine caricature, while still making you believe this woman is worthy of being loved, gives the part such poignancy; it’s a rare portrayal of recovery culture in an American movie that actually seems realistic. “I told Jonathan that we weren’t making an American movie at all,” the actor jokes. “Addicts are only used as plot conveniences, so I thought, Fuck it, let’s treat Rachel like it was a French film. Although by the end of the shoot, I felt like we’d drifted more toward Romania.” She lets out a laugh before suddenly turning serious. “But I remember telling a friend of mine who’s a recovering addict about the project,” Hathaway continues. “She told me she was so glad this was getting made. When I asked her why, she replied, ‘Because rehab is only the first step, Anne. The hard work comes once you leave, and nobody ever makes a movie about that.’ ”

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