Rachel Getting Married

It's too bad this film's title makes it seem like just another romantic comedy, it's the opposite of formulaic nonsense. In fact, it's a head-on collision with painfully serious questions about substance abuse and subsequent coping strategies.

Some of the drama seems thin at first because the film's structure delays a lot of the necessary exposition, but once it all comes out the motives are in place for some legitimate conflict.

The film's argument is that there are two tendencies in response to trauma: blame others or blame oneself. Is this right? Are there merely plaintiffs and defendants in matters of the soul?

The secret murderer, the real culprit, is the mother. She's the only one left out of the film's subtle arc of reconciliation, and it is her love that may have been missing from the start.

Rachel Getting Married