MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
Noel Baumbach Starring: Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Turturro, Ciaran Hinds,Zane Pais Distributed by Paramount Vantage Film is released in the U.K. on February 29th. Review by Michael Edwards
rating: 2.5
Margot at the Wedding is the latest film from Noah Baumbach - the man who brought us The Squid and the Whale and frequently collaborated to great effect with Wes Anderson (bring on The Fantastic Mr. Fox!). In this outing he continues to address his (and Anderson's) favourite topic of family dysfunction, though here he attempts to broaden the scope of The Squid and the Whale and encompass a couple of generations to depict the immediate affect of the actions of parents on their children, and also the long-lasting traumas of family conflict. Sound uncomfortable? It really really is. The quirkiness played upon with Wes Anderson is sadly absent here, and we are left with an unrelenting attack of pschoanalytic neuroses, deeply harboured resentment and huge bouts of egotism. We are set up with the anticipation of the wedding of Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Malcolm (Jack Black), which has sparked a visit from Pauline's estranged sister Margot (Nicole Kidman) and her son Claude (Zane Pais) in the build-up to the main event. From the word go the movie traces a seemingly unstoppable barrage of awkwardly allegorical mini-events illustrating the deep personal problems of the characters. Margot is goaded into climbing a tree and gets stuck at the top, Claude falls into a swimming pool where he sees a drowned rat and so on. And as if there wasn't enough weirdly uncomfortable things on display, we also get to see Jack Black crying naked. Thanks, but no thanks. I don't want to be too down on the film though. Frustrating and difficult it certainly is, but Noah Baumbach remains sensitive and provocative as a director. His close-up handheld camera work drags us into the mire inhabited by these characters and doesn't let up, and his attention to the most minute details of his characters flaws are impressive. Nicole Kidman, well versed in being outwardly pleasant but really ascerbic and vile inside from other recent roles, twitches and slips and lashes out at key moments; Jennifer Jason Leigh detaches herself as conflict coalesces and only occasionally develops a spine to combat one lost childhood battle or another; and Jack Black bumbles around in his own depressed oafish way as he laments his own mediocrity. All very clever and well-devloped, but frankly just not that much fun. There just isn't enough goodness in any of these characters for the audience to really tap in and identify them, the children (so often deployed in film as a symbol of hope or redemption) offer a glimmer of hope of escape from the tortuous anxieties of their family woes, but this too is mercilessly violated by Baumbach's desire to imbue everything with the unnecessary sexual undertones so overused in artistic discussion of family dysfuntion. All of this makes Margot at the Wedding a bit of a distant and unfulfilling experience. In this film we may well be glimpsing a clearer expression of Baumbach's own voice. As was the case for The Squid and the Whale, this feature can be viewed primarily as a microcosm of family life gone sour, debated through intense scrutiny of character flaws, and unhealthy reliance on the basic tools of psychoanalysis and occasionally quirky and always overemphasised moments of allegorical imagery. It's not a really bad film, Baumbach continues to exhibit great deftness behind the camera in terms of his sensitivity and the ability to keep the viewer at once within the action and at sufficient critical distance to join him in his observational analysis (a tricky juggling act for a director). It's just that I really didn't have much fun watching it, I couldn't get into the warped minds of the inhabitants of the movie and didn't really want to. I thus left feeling a bit befuddled as to what was wanted from me in watching it... although I did also feel far happier about my own family life, which is never a bad thing.