"I am Shiva"—a line that almost goes unnoticed, yet those words capture the essence of Kym in Rachel Getting Married. Shiva is the Hindu god of destruction. Kym leaves ruin in her wake everywhere she goes.

Kym is released from her rehab hospital to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. Kym is an addict, even though she's been clean for nine months. (Note that she never says she is sober, only clean.) She has a great deal of darkness in her past. She has brought great pain to her family through the years, but still, in the words of Robert Frost, "home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." It's not that Kym is not loved; her parents and sister love her dearly. But she is difficult to have around.

This is a film that relies on a sense of realism for its power. The handheld camera work—and the way the camera takes us in to a place that feels too close—creates an uncomfortable intimacy. We are meant to know what it is like to be in such a family. As is often the case, Kym and her addiction is always the center of attention. At the rehearsal dinner as everyone takes turns telling stories about the bride and groom, we keep waiting for the Kym-bomb to go off. The film doesn't get it over with quickly. Instead it makes us wait, building the tension that we know is bound to come. The family also knows Kym well enough to expect something, but they are powerless to stop it.

Kym's addiction is also the elephant in the room that everyone skirts around and pretends isn't there. Notice that the film is titled Rachel Getting Married, but Kym is the one who is the center of attention in the film and in the family. She creates uproar just by her presence, a presence that everyone seems both to want and to recoil from. The setting of the film during a wedding weekend gives us an expectation of celebration—and there is lots of celebration. But real life is always a mixture of celebration and troubles. Kym turns the story into an almost manic-depressive event. Even the audience is drawn to her, but becomes nervous just because she is there.

This is a character-driven drama. Plot is far less important than the people we see. To pull that off requires excellent performances, and director Jonathan Demme gave the actors the freedom to create their roles within the loose structure of the script. Whether it is the central characters like Anne Hathaway's Kym and Rosemarie DeWitt's Rachel or the supporting cast such as Bill Irwin as their father, Debra Winger as their mother, and the various friends and family on the periphery of the story, each character seems to be a real person. The father's role, for example, is a perfect example of the kind of peacemaker that tries to keep order in such families.

A key issue in the film is the concept of forgiveness. In her twelve-step program, she has learned of the need to make amends—but she hasn't really learned how to do it. In fact, when she tries to make amends she only makes everything far worse. She longs to be forgiven, but can't allow herself to be. She cannot even forgive herself. At a twelve-step meeting she says she doesn't want to believe in a God who would forgive her.

The family certainly wants some sort of reconciliation and forgiveness, but the wounds still fester from the years of Kym's bad behavior, especially the most traumatic event in the family's life that Kym brought about. The family is stuck in the uproar of Kym's life. They may have a respite while she is in rehab, but there is really no growth out of the vortex of destruction. Kym certainly never grows. Whenever she shows up in the family, everyone reverts to their given role in the drama.

We may be used to looking for some sort of grace that will bring us a happy ending, but that would be dishonest in this situation. Grace is hard. It can even be severe. A harsh grace is what is needed in this family, and especially in Kym's life. There are little flashes of the possibility of grace from time to time, but we know that after the events of the weekend, no one is any closer to reconciliation than when they began.