Margot at the Wedding (2007) Paramount Vantage
1 hr. 32 mins.
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, Zane Pais, John Turturro, Flora Cross
Directed by: Noah Baumbach
This film is rated: R

Rating: ** stars (out of 4 stars)

One wouldn't necessarily expect the monotonously moody Margot at the Wedding to be the sluggish follow-up to filmmaker Noah Baumbach's wonderful entry The Squid and the Whale. Sure, Baumbach has crafted a couple of loosely biographical-based dysfunctional family dramas that seem to make great therapeutic gestures for his cinematic sensibilities. The difference is that we wanted more serving of Squid but feel obligated to skip his Wedding. Synthetically dull, manipulative and emotionally clunky, Baumbach's mawkish melodrama is a pretentious and garrulous character study that sits idly in its moping gibberish.

Writer-director Baumbach has apparent trouble in fleshing out his extremely flawed and unlikable characterizations by pitting them in a stagnant and pompously glib narrative about neurotic people going through the angst-ridden motions. The film's atmosphere has all the creative excitement of a prescribed sleeping pill. The performers overplay their stillborn existences and we are never quite convinced of how wounded and reflective they are in the manufactured estrangement that exists. Baumbach has rounded up a solid cast headed up by Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman but the murky platitudes never register. Margot at the Wedding is a major disappointment for a promising moviemaker that jumped out of the crowd so profoundly with the aforementioned critically praised The Squid and the Whale.

Self-absorbed short story writer Margot (Kidman) and her androgynous-looking (and sounding) son Claude (Zane Pais) are en route to visit the family compound on the East Coast. The occasion: her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is getting married. Unfortunately, this reunion will be sort of awkward because Margot and Pauline haven't really communicated in over a year. Nevertheless, Margot will witness her sister getting hitched--albeit ill-advised--to an obnoxious portly out-of-work musician/abstract painter named Malcolm (Jack Black).

Granted that Margot questions free-spirit Pauline's judgement as to why she is settling for such a slouch like the unredeemable Malcolm. However, the conflicted writer isn't as logical or beyond criticism regarding her particular quirks either. First, Margot's own marriage has been tainted as she is at odds with her husband Jim (John Turturro) who shows up unexpectedly after she asked him not to make an appearance. Margot has a lover just up the road from Pauline's place that she's sleeping with at will. Her son Claude has adolescent issues dealing with personal hygiene and sexual curiosity. Pauline's daughter Ingrid (Flora Cross) has manly tendencies that put her cousin Claude to shame. The truth is that both Margot and Pauline are a royal mess.

It seems as if Baumbach's irreverent intentions in pouring on the nuanced nuttiness falls on its self-deprecating knees. See Margot and Pauline bicker about all things past and present. See Margot pleasure herself in a lonely bedroom while Pauline and Malcolm have on-the-spot sex in the most curious of places. See Claude peek at a nude couple "doing it" through the fence. See Claude get bitten by an uncouth neighboring boy. See Margot symbolically climb a tree only to get stuck as her family chuckles. See Margot complain about needless gifts and shun the usage of deodorant. See Pauline's desperation surface. See Pauline poop in her pants through sheer frustration (yuck!). See Margot melt down at a special book reading function. See Pauline chastise Margot for using their family's dirty laundry as an inspiration for her quirky pages. See Malcolm deny then come clean about his tarnished, cheating character.

Clearly, there are artists that have a genuine knack for turning the tragic family dynamic into a sordid and sensationalistic gold mine--Wes Anderson is one of Baumbach's contemporaries that caters to this impish genre. However, Margot at the Wedding needlessly beats this concept into a trite pulp while never fully establishing a vindictive vitality that defines these wayward souls. There is nothing subtle about Kidman's beleaguered Margot or Leigh's clueless Pauline other than having these disenfranchised siblings follow-the-dots in didactic despair. Plus, the film's dreary photography (courtesy of Harris Savides) wants to capture the allure of misery and misguided mockery but only ends up putting a damper on an already sullen exposition.

Why wait for the maligned Margot to grace her annoying presence at this Wedding when you can omit the precipitous proceedings and look forward to the reception--in our case, the closing credits?

Frank Ochieng
@ World Voice News (2007)