Rachel Getting Married

To date, the problem with Anne Hathaway has been that while she does indeed look beautifully luminescent on screen, she has so far been shunted into a kind of oxbow lake of dreary roles: sweet, dribbly characters who must find their inner fire if they are to find true love.

Rachel Getting Married is an altogether different prospect. Here, she is Kym: chaotic, unhinged, fresh out of rehab and heading to her sister Rachel's wedding in the picture-perfect location of their father's Connecticut farmhouse.

The effect is like watching a fly land in the ointment in slow motion. She alights in her black, black mood, billowing smoke and with dark bags beneath her eyes, and succeeds in dragging the attention of her family - especially that of her father (Bill Irwin) - away from the blushing bride (Rosemarie DeWitt).

Essentially, this is less a tale of recovery and the sprawling mess of addiction than the portrait of a family; one that is rough and dysfunctional, affectionate and true. There is no upward swoop, no saccharine polish; only the flawed familiarity of modern relationships.

In this, it is a credit to the director, Jonathan Demme, but, yes, also to Hathaway, an actress who here at last seems to have found that inner fire.