Rachel Getting Married: 113 minutes. Rated: M. Director: Jonathan Demme. Starring: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mather Zickel, Bill Irwin, Tunde Adebimpe
Idiopathic hyperhydrosis is an embarrassing and unpleasant affliction. Discussion of it does not constitute polite conversation in any but the most intimate of social circles.
I discovered this from experience. Even technical-sounding explanations featuring phrases such as 'overactive sympathetic nervous system' and 'inordinate quantities of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine' do little to stifle the listener's distaste.
So I'll spare the details. Suffice it to say that by the time I arrive at the cinema complex, after a ride on a tram packed and muggy with smelly sports fans (the city is crawling with Australian Open tourists), and a short jog through the 39-degree heat (a strategy against tardiness), I am icky, sticky, and more than a little self-conscious.
I'm here for a screening of the finely observed domestic drama, Rachel Getting Married. As the film commences it occurs to me that perhaps my obvious but unmentionable discomfort gives me some insight into the central character.
Kym (Hathaway) is the flaky sister of the titular bride (DeWitt). Her affliction is more serious and debilitating than mine: she's a recovering addict, home from rehab to help celebrate Rachel's nuptials.
There's a superficial niceness to the proceedings that, with the arrival of Kym, seems smeared with a sickly sheen. From the time of her return to her family home, amid a hubbub of guests and preparations, Kym is the proverbial leper, object in equal parts of pity and repulsion.
Yes, I reflect, mopping my brow. I know how that feels.
On the subject of embarrassing afflictions, here's another: I get motion sickness during movies. That's a shameful admission for a film reviewer to make, although it only occurs during films with shaky hand-held camera work, or if I am sitting too close to the front.
Rachel Getting Married has the former — director Demme approaches the everyday interactions between family and friends, and the preparations for the celebration itself, with a realist, almost documentary approach. An effective cinematic technique, certainly. But, for me, conducive to queasiness.
To make matters worse, due to my lateness and the resultant lack of spare seats, I have found myself sitting not only too close to the front, but off to the side in an oddly oblong cinema, so that the screen is nauseatingly close at one end, dizzyingly distant at the other.
My proximity to this