Sunday 22 May 2011

Review #97: 'Margot at the Wedding' (2007)

Margot (Nicole Kidman) is a neurotic and mentally unstable writer, who with her son Claude (Zane Pais) head out to the country to visit her free-spirited sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who is soon to be married. It is shocking to Margot that her attractive and intelligent sister would be marrying someone like Malcolm (Jack Black), an overweight failed musician whose past is soon to catch up with him. The two sisters have apparently put their troubled pasts behind them and seem to be getting on well, but Margot's penchant for spreading secrets and generally strange and aggressive behaviour threatens to place the sisters at loggerheads once again, and jeopardise the whole wedding.

Director Noah Baumbach's work seems to autobiographical, giving his films an independent insight into relationships and family. His 2005 film The Squid And The Whale explored divorce through the eyes of two young brothers, and was uncomfortable and real in a way that can only be known through experience. Margot At The Wedding explores sibling rivalry, and issues of selfishness, frustration and jealousy and is executed with the same amount of intelligence as his previous effort, but does not hit the same heights. This is mainly because the characters are just repellent and unsympathetic that I wondered why I should watch a film revolving around them. However, the film remains interesting and is sporadically funny, and is well performed by an ensemble, namely by Kidman.


Directed by: Noah Baumbach
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie



Margot at the Wedding (2007) on IMDb

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