Margot at the Wedding

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.

I assume you are normal. Whatever that is. Would you ever stop to question that?

Margot is a fish out of water. She would be 'normal' back home. Her pond is Manhattan. Intellectuals. 'Nice' people. Successful. Words of several syllables that easily slip into popular psychobabble - but in an acceptable sort of way. Social affirmation obscures our faults. The world after all is as we, and our friends, understand it to be. A self-selecting reality.

For Margot's sister Pauline, the self-selecting, self-affirming, 'normality' is different. She lives in the countryside. Fulfilment would be a down-to-earth lifestyle with someone who thinks she's great. That man in her life, played by Jack Black, is a very ordinary sort. He doesn't even have a proper job. But they seem content. They will marry under the family tree. In the garden.

As two worlds collide, flaws that could have been overlooked come nastily to the surface. Margot can only return Pauline's sisterly love in a cold, cerebral way. She becomes easy to dislike. We soon doubt her sincerity. Pauline looks more and more pathetic against her accomplished sibling. She becomes easy to feel sorry for. Blood is thicker than water. But it exerts unbearable strain.

In best scenarios, romantic comedies and feelgood movies, love always triumphs over dysfunctionality. If only life was so reliable. With the uplifting coup of family bonds in such films as Little Miss Sunshine or The Darjeeling Ltd. Those movies provided us with reassuring escapism. And I admit they were more satisfying than the rather bleak Margot at the Wedding. But it is this film that gives such niggling pause for thought.

It is easy for box office comedy to turn on family difference that ultimately heals. But it is the less than fairytale endings that we have to deal with in real life. Not funny. Maybe just a bit painful. Like estranged family. Hurts that don't heal in a neat two hours of celluloid.

Margot at the Wedding is not a great movie. Nor a comfortable one. It looks at the fragility of one's persona - or definition of normality - that we use to interact with society. With society's forgiving and less forgiving parts. Parts that are perhaps within our own families. But it does encourage you to think. And there are too few movies out just now that do that.

What does it say about your wedding when your estranged sister's attendance is a bigger event than the wedding itself? I mean, it's right there in the title of Noah Baumbach's dysfunctional family disaster movie. It isn't called "The Wedding" or "Malcolm and Pauline Get Married". No, it's called MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. If your sister at your wedding causes that big a stir, perhaps the invitation would have been better lost in the mail. Still, despite her better judgment and in the interest of progress and healing, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does invite the sister she still refers to as her closest friend after years of not speaking, to her intimate affair. It is clear her idea was not her best from the moment Margot (Nicole Kidman) steps off the boat and on to the New England shore. Pauline sends her fiancé, Malcolm (Jack Black), to pick Margot and her eldest son, Claude (Zane), up from the ferry. She claims to be making last minute arrangements back at the house but I suspect it was she and not the house who was not quite ready to receive. Then, when the two are finally face to face, standing in front of the house they grew up in, they smile and make pleasantries but fidget hesitatingly before actually embracing. That awkward moment grows into a whirlwind of deep-seeded pain before long and suddenly rain on the blessed day is hardly the biggest worry for the bride-to-be.

Baumbach scored last time out with his Oscar-nominated THE SQUID AND THE WHALE. He was lauded for his sensitive and honest tale of divorce and how it affects the entire family unit. With MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, he solidifies his reputation for creating believable family ties based on dependence, dysfunction and subtle admiration. Watching the sisters as they sit around the house catching up is voyeuristic as we are often privy to conversations that feel as though they were not meant to be heard. As the sisters flip through old records in their even older house, Baumbach writes decades of experiences into his characters and we, like Malcolm, are latecomers to this dinner party. Director of photography, Harris, draws us even closer to this inner circle by shooting mostly hand-held footage in natural lighting and with older lenses. The resulting tone is dark and grainy but nostalgic and rich with history at the same time. At times, we are the quiet cousin who says nothing but stands in the corner with a camera and follows the drama from room to room. It isn't long before we learn how to interpret the vernacular of this particular family and we find ourselves laughing along inappropriately at the expense of whomever Margot is lovingly ridiculing at the moment. As we laugh though, we care as well.

Kidman and Leigh (Baumbach's wife) are both marvelous as they walk the very tightly wound lines of their borderline personalities. Baumbach guides their performances into textured characters that seem natural as sisters and strongly rooted as multifaceted people who struggle to be themselves when in the presence of the other. They even possess archetypal qualities without coming across as contrived. Margot is the master of deflection. She is constantly doling out psychological diagnoses to those around her to avoid any fingers pointing back her way. It never dawns on her that as a writer, she actually has no formal foundation to base her opinions on. She cannot understand why Pauline would settle for Malcolm; she picks at Claude to keep him closer; she even attacks her husband (John Turturro) for his good nature because it just makes her feel like a bad person. She is a fatalist to Pauline's hopeful but defeated optimist. Pauline is damaged but wants to heal and has done so much more than she gives herself credit for. She teeters back and forth between making sneaky, subtle jabs at her sister, habits from her youth, and building new connections so that she can have the sister she always wanted instead of the one she has always had. Only, in the house that Baumbach built, the answer to whether people can ever truly change is not the least bit clear.

Family, even the best examples, can be tricky to negotiate. Spending any extended period of time with the people who both influenced you and hurt you the most in your life can be exhausting. That said, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING can be no less trying. There are those who revel in watching others with deeper dysfunction then their own. It helps them to feel that their lives are not nearly as bad as they thought. There are also others who feel they have enough to juggle already with potentially damaging weddings of their own to survive coming up fast. Why then immerse yourself in a tornado of neuroses and painful memories that are not even your own? Truthfully, you don't have to. Along those lines, Pauline never needed to invite her sister to her wedding either. Only if she hadn't, she would have missed out on everything the experience taught her about herself and the potential for progress. This is the genuine beauty of Baumbach's work. He shares so intensely and personally that he inevitably forces the viewer to deal with their own inner-Margot.

This little family drama starts when estranged siblings come together for a wedding.

It's Jennifer Jason Leigh's wedding, but the movie centers on her narcissistic sister Nicole Kidman, who spends the movie quietly and skillfully tearing down everyone around her, including her own child, and the trying to undo the damage with a half-hearted compliment. She is an interesting character who knows she's often cruel and uncaring but simply blames other people for making her realize it.

Not much happens in the film, which is all about small moments and Kidman's small-scale destruction. The most interesting moments are those in which Kidman confronts her limitations and flaws, as in the tree- climbing scene or the interview. Jack Black is also effective as the schlub JJL is marrying.

I love JJL, but she feels a little overshadowed here. That's understandable, as she plays a relatively normal character.

While there were good scenes, the movie never grabbed me, and the ending left me simply wondering why Baumbach had bothered to make this. It all feels so ultimately pointless.

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 ****