Margot at the Wedding

Baumbach was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay for his amusing, spot-on study of a New York literary intellectual family in crisis, 'The Squid and the Whale.' As befits one who received accolades and some little box office success, he has moved forward with similar themes and a better budget, and was able to enlist not only several more well-known actors but a famous cinematographer, Harris Savides, and a renowned costume designer, Ann Roth. Baumbach has also moved along in time, as it were. If 'The Squid and the Whale' was a parental breakup mostly considered from the viewpoint of a teenage boy, this family analysis has more of an adult sibling focus--though there's a boy on hand who's important. More limited in its time-span than 'Squid,' 'Margot' is more complex in its specifics and in its conversational delineation of neurotics at play. Just about every scene is a relationship meltdown. It's a wonder nobody comes to violence. In fact one character does get kicked in the chest, and a big tree falls down, doing some damage.

Baumbach himself may understand what all this is about, but the choppily edited and shot piece has too little dramatic structure (despite being very much like a play) to go anywhere or make much overall sense. Despite good buzz from some quarters and urban (especially New York) fans, the young director may lose with 'Margot' a sizable slice of the credibility he gained with 'Squid.'

Pauline (Baumbach's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh), who lives on the family house on an island, is about to be married, for the second time, to out of work artist Malcolm (Jack Black). Her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) comes with her young adolescent son Claude (Zane Pais). Ingrid (Flora Cross), Pauline's daughter, is there, and a playmate for Claude. Margot is a well-known short-story writer, and it turns out she's scheduled for a reading at a local bookstore with a former flame, Dick (Ciaran Hinds), whom she seems to want to get together with again. Dick's sexy daughter Maisy (Halley Feiffer) is also on hand. Margot has told her husband Jim (John Turturro) not come for the wedding (though briefly he does appear).

Pauline and Margot haven't been getting on well for years, but they both approach this occasion with the misguided assumption that they're nonetheless still each other's best friends and that things are going to be rich and consoling.

But as soon as the good-looking and accomplished, if thoroughly neurotic Margot lays eyes on the fat layabout Malcolm, she goes to work on Pauline to cancel the wedding--even though Pauline reveals she's pregnant. There is a family of nasty neighbors, the Voglers, who want the big tree in the backyard to come down. Its roots are spreading to their property, it's rotting, and it's poisoning their plants, they say.

Margot wants Claude to become more independent, but neither of them is ready for that yet. Nobody seems to be ready for anything, relationship-wise. This is about the only thing that clearly emerges.

One of the problems is in the conception of the main characters. This is not the anguished, edgy Leigh we've often seen in the past but a mellow woman, and despite lack of accomplishment and temper tantrums (which he credibly argues are justified in this crazy situation) Malcolm may have been a sweet guy who clicks very well with Pauline. Margot seems to make trouble for everybody, beginning wit her son. But since she's the most accomplished family member, it's a bit hard to know how to take her. It's a bit hard to know how to take anybody. Complex characters are fine, but nobody in this piece is going in a consistent direction. And this is equally true of the action. Was the wedding meant to have a meltdown before it ever happened?

This is a slice of life in more ways than one. Scenes are constantly cut off and linked to the next by jump cuts, an effect meant to be vérité and sophisticated that tends at times merely to look sloppy. Though Baumbach says he got exactly the look he wanted, it's surprising that the Savides of 'Elephant' and 'Zodiac' would give us so many shots that are seriously under-lit. Again, the effect hovers between original and amateurish.

All this is a shame, because all the actors do great work. The young newcomer who plays Margot's son Claude, Zane Pais, is indeed miraculously natural and believable. Leigh and Kidman do some of their best work, and Jack Black has perfect pitch in every line. There's no doubt that weeks of careful rehearsals on the set, in the house, helped the cast work so well together, and Baumbach knew what he wanted. But it reads as a series of vignettes rather than a film.

Baumbach's 'Margot At The Wedding', in the centre, tells the story of a writer who reunites with her sister at her 'wedding'. Margot is a neurotic borderliner who would go around picking flaws at and diagnosing other people to avoid her own issues. She is so afraid of loss that she keeps her son dependent on her but at the same time she keeps everyone at a distance. Her sister Pauline, also a borderliner, is pretty much an extension of her EXCEPT that she tries to stay optimistic and is trying to heal and dealing with her own issues. Their awkward reunion creates a clash of their personalities, reveals clues of some disturbing family history and results in chaos.

Baumbach's execution is raw and simplistic. The minimal use of music, slightly washed out colours, unpolished visuals and hand-held camera-work allows the audience to be involved in the characters' lives as voyeurs. Either the viewer is peeking into the private moments of the sisters or he/she is there as a silent observer. Baumbach's writing is terrific. Even though the dialogues are of few words, they speak volumes and go back to years of experience. The characters are superbly written. Even though you resent them at some point or even laugh at them, you care about them throughout. In the dialogues between the sisters, Baumbach hints some dark underlying themes such as incest, rape, abuse, over-dependence, dysfunctional relationships and abandonment. He does not fully explore them but cleverly suggests them allowing the viewer to ponder. There are also plenty of subtle themes that are introduced.

Nicole Kidman, once again, delivers an excellent performance. She proves that she can handle any complex role and this is why she is among the best. Jennifer Jason Leigh is equally stupendous as Pauline. Watching Margot and Pauline really felt like watching two real sisters who have had a chaotic unsettling family history. Both Kidman and Jason Leigh display raw emotions that move the viewer. Jack Black too is great as Malcolm. Zane Pais and Flora Cross are good and John Torturro is brilliant.

'Margot At The Wedding' is one of the darkest comedies that centre around a dysfunctional family. It's disturbing but also funny and keeps you pondering. It might not appeal to all but there are some of us who can appreciate this kind of movie.

"Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules." F. Scott Fitzgerald

Margot at the Wedding is the heavier side of its director Noah Baumbach's Squid and the Whale and just a bit weightier than Little Miss Sunshine. Nowhere is it near the lightness of The Royal Tenenbaums, but the dysfunctional family motif hovers always close to the risible. Margot is a feast of acting seasoned with sides of family lunacy close enough to the seeming sanity of most our families.

Margot (Nichole Kidman) and her son, Claude (Zane Pais), visit her estranged sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), for Pauline's' impending marriage to immature, lovable slacker Malcolm (Jack Black). Margot, thinking Malcolm isn't worthy of Pauline, is not secret about her dislike ("He's not ugly. He's completely unattractive"). But then short-story writer Margot has never been reticent about family matters, as writing about them caused the rift with her sister many years ago.

If this story echoes Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach, it is probably not a coincidence, both in title and accent on dialogue, but in no way does even Rohmer approach Baumbach's trenchant criticism of contemporary family relationships, including the tricky one between eccentric son and neurotic mom.

If for no other reason, see this family dysfunction drama to enjoy feeling superior to the downright mine field each of the characters faces daily in a family that turns back on itself in forgiveness as frequently as Britney Spears loses her kids and gains them back again. Mix in a little Freudian psychoanalysis ("What was it about Dad that had us f------ so many guys?") and East-coast sunless scenes, and you'll wish for your Thanksgiving back so you could newly appreciate its relatively low-level social WMD's and surprising humor.

Like the grainy film stock and low-key lighting, Nicole Kidman's Margot brings gloom despite her daunting beauty and witty tongue. Oh, well, that's my kind of lady, and that's my tumultuous family, ready for a Christmas turkey that should be more delectable this time around thanks to Noah Baumbach.

Group of erratic, confounding and humorously twisted family members are reunited at a prospective wedding in Long Island, with the estranged Margot (Nicole Kidman) behaving as sort of the ringleader to the inner-chaos (she's not necessarily a reminder of old hurts, but she brings them up anyway, as if it's her duty). Writer-director Noah Baumbach's style is unlike anyone else's in the movies right now; as both a writer and a director, he's amazingly compatible working both sides of his talent (his dialogue is the music while his direction--and the nimble editing--provides the rhythm). Baumbach allows his characters to tease and torment each other with quiet, yet unsubtle prodding, and the free-flowing scenes play out beautifully, just like music. If there is a downside to this style, it's that Baumbach can often be too knowing, and when a line or a performance is too clever it can appear forced. Jack Black was a wonderful choice as unemployed Malcolm, the slacker-bridegroom who finds swimming pools disgusting and the thought of being famous too threatening because of the rejection involved; however, Black is allowed too much time to find the humor in his slovenly character. He's fine when he's made out to be the dupe or the target of girlfriend Jennifer Jason Leigh's frustrations, but when he tries to conform to Baumbach's image of Malcolm as an enraged clown, the affectation shows and we lose both the substance and the irony of this man (we get more than we need--and more than we already perceive to be there). Baumbach is also perhaps too brazen staging talks of a sexual nature between adults and children; this works when the subject matter is touched on by the younger people only, but Margot's relationship with her pubescent son (which Margot already accepts is too entwined) skirts uncomfortable parameters which might be more amusing if the characters on-screen laughed a little bit, too. The movie is brittle, though it has a great, wounded heart and very perceptive ears for passive-aggressive arguments and misunderstandings. This family can't get over their neuroses because they don't see themselves as neurotic--only each other, and the world. It's summed up nicely in a scene with Margot and her gift-bearing husband when she tells him, "I hate getting a present that I already have. It makes me feel like you don't really know me." **1/2 from ****

First of all: "Margot at the Wedding" is not a comedy or a chick flick, as the distributors wanted you to believe - hence, the movie being a major box-office flop/critical failure. Noah Baumbach's follow-up to his endearing, critically acclaimed "The Squid and the Whale", is just as good as his previous film, but much darker and mature.

Margot (Nicole Kidman, in her first good film since "Dogville" - this is her comeback, too bad most people didn't get it) and her son Claude (Zane Pais) go visit Margot's estranged sister, Pauline (the always wonderful Jennifer Jason Leigh), who's about to marry a not very distinctive type (Jack Black, okay for the first half of the movie, but shows no drama skills at a pivotal scene - his performance being the only major letdown in the movie for me). It won't be an easy time for any of them. Baumbach could've done something lighter and gotten another critics' fave like "Whale", but thank God for real auteurs, he did something different, and succeeded on it (at least, in my books!). "Margot at the Wedding" is, right from the title, a homage to Éric Rohmer ("Pauline at the Beach" - by the way, Baumbach's movie was entitled "Nicole at the Beach", but they had to change the title when Kidman was cast), with similarities to Bergman ("Persona", in particular) and Woody Allen's more serious films ("September", for instance, which were already inspired by Bergman). Baumbach's writing is fantastic, very quotable and personal, and the cast got the idea and did a remarkable job (except for Black). A misunderstood gem. 9/10.