Margot at the Wedding

Margot at the Wedding

Directed by Noah Baumbach (R)

Two dysfunctional sisters reunite and take sibling rivalry to a ruthless level.

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Margot at the Wedding is “one of the most emotionally mature American movies ever made about emotionally immature people,” said David Fear in Time Out New York. In his follow-up to The Squid and the Whale, writer-director Noah Baumbach retains traces of that film’s awkward, often inappropriate family dynamics. Here he tackles the sisterly love and hate between free-spirited Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and hypercritical Margot (Nicole Kidman), who has succeeded as a writer but failed as a sister, wife, and mother. “After years of mutually cold shoulders,” Pauline invites Margot to her wedding, and the reunion is almost too painful to watch. Baumbach once again finds pleasure from misery, said Glenn Kenny in Premiere. No one is safe from Margot’s “weapons of emotional destruction,” and yet the film is “strangely enjoyable.” It’s like a nastier, more depressing version of Eric Rohmer’s 1983 classic, Pauline at the Beach. Baumbach’s title and subject matter may be similar, but as a director he lacks Rohmer’s lightness, said Moira Macdonald in The Seattle Times. Baumbach “pulls us in close,” but these aren’t characters we want to get to know. Ultimately, Pauline and Margot are so unlikable they become uninteresting, and you leave the theater grateful they’re not related to you.