I wasn’t prepared for how good Anne Hathaway would be in Rachel Getting Married. Up until now, she’d mostly been tied to fairy-tale roles and lighter fare but this? This is something else. It’s raw and emotionally brutal.

After watching her Oscar-nominated performance in Rachel Getting Married, I was completely turned around. This isn’t The Princess Diaries. This is raw and emotionally brutal. Hathaway goes all in, and it works.

The film follows Kym (Hathaway), a young woman who’s been in and out of rehab for a decade, returning home for her sister Rachel’s wedding. What follows is a blend of family tension, old wounds resurfaced and unexpected moments of tenderness, all under the cloud of celebration.

It features a cast that includes a former American Idol contestant, Ella Enchanted, Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street, Debra Winger from Terms of Endearment, and Tunde Adebimpe (the lead singer of TV on the Radio)… and yet it totally works. Casting directors Tiffany Canfield and Bernard Telsey deserve huge credit for creating a diverse ensemble that feels like a real family.

The whole thing plays like a documentary dropped into a wedding weekend. The emotional claustrophobia is real. Addiction, grief, jealousy, love and guilt are all in the mix. And it’s handled with such realism that you almost forget you’re watching a scripted film. The wedding itself is one of the most memorable I’ve seen onscreen: a beautiful fusion of cultures, live music and lived-in emotion. You want to be there, even when the drama gets suffocating.

And then there’s the infamous dinner table scene. I knew it was coming. People warned me. And I still wasn’t ready. It’s an ensemble tour de force where every buried family issue bubbles to the surface, and it hurts like a mojo. I’ve never felt that uncomfortable watching a movie in a theater. And I couldn’t look away.

Major applause to Jenny Lumet, who wrote this beast in just seven weeks. It’s an honest, unsanitized look at a fractured family trying (and failing) to keep it together in the midst of a big life event. No tidy resolutions. Just the reality of pain, growth, and people doing the best they can.

I’m not going to spoil it. This is a film that deserves to be watched uninterrupted. One sitting. One breath. Let it wash over you. You’ll find someone to relate to, you’ll hear a song that cuts deep and your eyes will well up at least once, even if you swear they didn’t.

Bravo, Anne Hathaway. Seriously. Bravo.