Movie Review: Margot at the Wedding

Margot Zeller, a savagely bright, razor-tongued short-story writer who creates chaos wherever she goes, sets off on a surprise journey to the wedding of her estranged and free-spirited, unassuming sister Pauline. Margot, with her all-too-rapidly maturing son Claude in tow, arrives with the gale force of a hurricane. From the minute she meets Pauline's fiancé--the unemployed artist Malcolm--Margot starts to plant seeds of doubt about the union. As the wedding approaches, one complication crashes into the next: vengeful neighbors, a beloved tree in the backyard and Margot's own marital turmoil. The two sisters find themselves at the precipice of an unexpected transformation ultimately revealing that even when your family is about to implode the one thing you can cling to for solace and comfort is your imploding family.

So I went to see Margot at the Wedding yesterday at the New York Film Festival yesterday. I was lucky to get the ticket since they go really fast every year, and I joined the Film Society at Lincoln Center precisely so that I could get tickets earlier, and I still didn't get tickets to see either of the Bob Dylan films that I wanted to see.

I had seen Noah Baumbach's other two films, the latest was the Squid and the Whale starring Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels and I liked his ability to create three dimensional characters warts and all. Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh are two of my least favorite actors. Most of the time I can see the wheels turning in their head during the movie. But they were both surprisingly natural and unaffected in this movie, particularly Jennifer Jason Leigh, who I find almost mannered in her acting.

There is no tidy ending to this movie, and the relationship that Margot has with her son Claude is almost too close, uncomfortably so. Their relationship demonstrates that their needs to be clear lines between parent and child. At times she treats him almost like a confidante and then at other times like he's a very small child, younger than 14. It's the type of movie that's going to make conservatives say "I told you so," that being too liberal as a parent can lead to problems.

Jack Black for me was the only weak link. He's not a very good actor, and he's certainly not in the same league as Kidman and Leigh. It helps that he's basically playing a schlub, the type of guy that most women have dated at one time or another, that you marry at your peril. Basically harmless but completely unmotivated, yet angry at the world because they're not getting the recognition or the job they think their talents deserve.

It was nice to see Irish actor, Ciaran Hinds in a small part as an old flame and colleague of Margot's and John Turturro as Margot's husband Jim.

The movie gives you tantalizing clues as to the relationship that Margot and Pauline had with their father. But you never see their other sister Becky or the mother. At first, I thought that there was something missing by not having them show up until the last minute and then barely on screen. But then I realized, they weren't really necessary because the movie is about Pauline and Margot, and their love/hate relationship.

I thought Noah Baumbach caught the relationship between the two sisters perfectly, one who seems to have everything, a nice husband, small amount of fame as a writer, two sons, and the sister who is less together, but you realize during the movie that it's actually reversed. Pauline is much more together than her older sister.

All in all I would give this movie a B+

EKM