Movie Reviews

Paramount Vantage

Review in a Hurry:  You know that relative you dread seeing at holiday gatherings? Now imagine they look like Nicole Kidman and you're stuck in the same dark room with her for 90 minutes. Welcome to Margot at the Wedding!

The Bigger Picture:  Margot (Kidman) is selfish, sarcastic, snobby and cruel, and she just might be mentally unwell. Did her dysfunctional dad screw her up for good? Is her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to quick to blame her for ruining relationships? Or all or none of the above?

There are no easy answers, pat solutions or clear-cut plotting throughout writer-director Noah Baumbach's movie. Simply put, it's a slice of a very messed-up family's life. There are funny moments, but essentially, this is a family that doesn't know where the kids end and the adults begin. Parents swear like sailors and dabble in affair-like behavior in front of their children; they confide in their kids about strictly mature matters; sensitive secrets are told and betrayed.

All of this occurs in the delicate days before Pauline's wedding, Margot being the dreaded guest that throws a wrench into the festivities. She drives everyone crazy, including us. Worst of all, her young son Claude (Zane Pais) bears the brunt of her abuse.

While the script is incisive and realistic, the acting outstanding and the production design and cinematography exquisitely authentic, the movie is one long uncomfortable squirm. There's a shred of hope throughout, but the end result of watching Margot at the Wedding is that you never want to hang out with these people again.

This is familiar territory for Baumbach—his debut The Squid and the Whale was also about a family lacking major boundaries. Maybe he's working out some issues, hmmm? Good for him—but do you really want to spend an hour and a half with the kind of people you try to avoid at every Thanksgiving?

The 180—a Second Opinion:  Baumbach does have a distinctive and intuitive style, using the camera to capture every emotion carefully—handheld and visceral one moment, steady and pondering the next. He composes his shots with artistic deliberation but not so much that the family fireworks don't fly freely.