Writer/director Theresa Connelly's debut film tells the story of a large, working-class Polish family living in Detroit. Lena Olin stars as the family's fierce matriarch, a cleaning woman with a rapacious libido and a fierce loyalty to her family that doesn't preclude cheating on her lethargic baker husband (Gabriel Byrne) with a wild-haired businessman. Claire Danes co-stars as the family's strong-willed oldest daughter, a high-school dropout who becomes involved with a sullen local police officer. While ostensibly a family drama about the sort of large, colorfully ethnic family that filmmakers can't seem to get enough of, Polish Wedding moves with such slow, hypnotic grace that it often seems more like an unusually vibrant character study than a conventional family drama. Polish Wedding is above all an actor's showcase: Olin, Byrne, and Danes are all talented actors who rarely get cast in roles that play to their strengths, but all three are perfectly utilized here. Byrne's role as Olin's long-suffering husband could easily have been overshadowed by her flashier role, but Byrne captures the sad, deluded contentment of his character so truthfully and powerfully that he comes close to stealing every scene he's in. In her previous roles as suffering working-class women, Danes (The Rainmaker, U-Turn) has tended to suggest an awkward teenager dressing up in her mother's clothes and trying out funny accents, but in Polish Wedding, she's found a role that takes advantage of her appealingly coltish vulnerability. Polish Wedding captures the vitality and joy of family life without ignoring the constrictions and sacrifices that likewise accompany subscribing to any social institution, be it marriage, church, or family. And while the film begins to lose its curious momentum toward the end, it's still a rich, complex sleeper.