'Margot' lays a serious beating on motherhood
If you love Nicole Kidman, and want to continue loving Nicole Kidman, take a flier on "Margot at the Wedding," an acidly comic tale of family troubles from writer-director Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale") and perhaps the bleakest portrait of motherhood since Angela Lansbury jerked Laurence Harvey's chain in "The Manchurian Candidate."
Which isn't to say that Kidman is ill-cast as the title character, a troubled New York author who numbly views her own life through glass. On the contrary, her performance is disturbingly apt.
With awkward teenage son Claude (Zane Pais) in tow, Margot pays a rare visit to her childhood home on the Long Island shore for the wedding of her sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in a sad, sly performance). Right away, the haughty and competitive Margot takes a disliking to Pauline's betrothed, Malcolm (Jack Black), a would-be writer and artist with a plus-sized persecution complex to match his waistline.
As the rumpled, childlike Malcolm, Black ("School of Rock") provides something resembling comic relief, albeit of highly neurotic grade. "You know that thing where you find out you're not the most important person in the world?" Malcolm asks, trying to reach out. "I haven't had that yet. It sounds good, though."
One imagines that Pauline could marry the Dalai Lama, and Margot would still disapprove. Though deeply connected to her sister -- they shared the same abusive, vaguely elitist childhood, after all -- Margot delights in picking at the imperfect seams of Pauline's rebuilt life. The only time the women seem remotely in harmony is when recalling the beatings administered by their late father, and the time their older sister was "raped by the horse trainer." This is the way horrible family secrets are mulled -- with a glass of white wine and a laugh.
Margot's relationship with the shy, pubescent Claude is even more dysfunctional. Pouring out her insecurities and petty hatreds under the cover of darkness and a bed sheet, Margot invites the boy into her distorted inner world in a way that suggests the "sexualized push-and-pull" of her short stories. As relationships go, she's hegemonic, waging a passive-aggressive war against all who love her, including her son.
For writer-director Baumbach, himself the son of New York media elites, "Margot at the Wedding" represents a more cryptic, novelistic approach to the terrain he covered in "The Squid and the Whale." Suffice to say, if the latter movie left you wanting for parental failure, literary vanity and the corduroy aesthetic of the late '70s, the former will surely fill the bill. It's not as structured -- it's not as good, honestly -- but it feels more personal and daring, and therefore hardly redundant.
"Margot at the Wedding"
Cast: Jack Black, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Noah Baumbach
Rated: R (sexual content and profanity), 91 minutes
Grade: B-
