Product Description

Margot Zeller (Nicole Kidman) is a short story writer with a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue. On the eve of her estranged sister Pauline’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding to unemployed musician/artist/depressive Malcolm (Jack Black) at the family seaside home, Margot shows up unexpectedly to rekindle the sisterly bond and offer her own brand of "support." What ensues is a nakedly honest and subversively funny look at family dynamics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15333 in DVD
• Brand: Paramount
• Released on: 2008-02-19
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 91 minutes

Amazon.com
The porcelain beauty of Nicole Kidman provides the perfect face for narcissism in Margot at the Wedding, writer/director Noah Baumbach's follow-up to his justly praised The Squid and the Whale. When Margot (Kidman) comes to attend the wedding of her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) with her son Claude (Zane Pais, making his film debut), it seems as if a family rift is being mended--but soon Margot and Pauline, despite their best efforts, revert to their most dysfunctional selves. It doesn't help that Pauline's fiance (Jack Black) is woefully depressed, Margot's lover (Ciaran Hinds, Rome) is as narcissistic as she is, and Margot's estranged husband (John Turturro) can't recognize how Margot cringes at his every effort at reconciliation. Margot at the Wedding may sound like a festival of neurosis, and it is--but the deft and subtle script, fully-lived-in performances, and empathic direction create moments so vivid you can't help but be drawn into the characters' ragged lives. At the movie's center is a mother-son relationship both loving and poisonous, portrayed with stark clarity. Kidman is the mirror image of Jeff Daniels as the arrogant father in The Squid and the Whale; she pulls her child down with her as she sinks in self-absorption. Pais, with a simple but heartbreaking performance, gives the brittle movie a sympathetic core. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Couldn't finish the movie
I tried - I really did - the house and Southampton setting lured me in. I quit 20 minutes in - there is just nothing to recommend this film. And no, I don't need happy ending movies either. It was the script I guess - maybe the acting as well. And some scenes you wondered why they were there at all - skip this one.

Depressing but Very Thought Provoking
Not a very enjoyable film but watching it can add to one's understanding of humanity...Very real characters with no answers but attempting to find them with great courage...
"We don't love people because they are perfect because if we did, we'd have no one to love"
"A person who falls in love with themselves will have no competition

Razor sharp, complex, and dour
I almost gave this five stars but the film's overwhelming negativity and dour nature prevented that. I can understand that writer director Noah Baumbach did not want to make a Hollywood movie--in fact, in this film, he essentially bends over backwards to make an ANTI-Hollywood movie--but surely there might be some shred of hope or positivity to identify with. But that's not the case here.

Instead we have a film of tremendous intelligence in that it does a masterful job at portraying the neurotic complexity of a number of characters--primarily Margot, her sister Pauline, and Pauline's fiance Malcolm--played respectively by Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jack Black. Black is so totally different in this film from anywhere else he's shown up that for my money, he's a real standout. He plays a woefully immature unemployed artist--very smart, but very lacking in emotional depth--who's engaged to Jennifer Jason Leigh's Pauline.

There's an interesting parallel structure here as well. Margot has a son Claude; Pauline has a daughter Ingrid; both are about the same age (roughly 11 or 12). Margot's lover Dick has a somewhat older daughter Maisie. Margot's estranged husband Jack has a somewhat similar relationship to her that Malcolm has to Pauline; both men are in some way distanced from their mates. In this film, no single character appears to have qualities that endear the viewer to him or her; Baumbach, it seems, wanted to insure that everyone here is perceived as neurotic enough to warrant some degree of distance from overt identification.

Thus what we really have here is not so much a linear film at all as a complex multi-character portrait in which the characters are revealed through different incidents and exchanges of conversation, all of which, as mentioned previously, are done with very high intelligence indeed. You can't help but admire this braininess, even as you cringe at the lack of heart that blasts through the film in one scene after another.

It could very well be this lack of heart that has given this a three-star average rating here. At least in Baumbach's last film, The Squid and the Whale, there was some evidence of warmth. Here there is bascially none.

At the very end, when Margot finally does catch the bus, you realize it's not because she wants to be with her son as much as it is not wanting to be with her sister, the option she would have if she stayed where she was. (I'm not giving anything away here because in essence, there's really nothing to give away).

Claude has problems, not only with his mother but also in how he relates to the world. When a neighborhood kid does something nasty to him, he runs to his mother. While this is not completely unexpected, at the same time, the viewer begins to see how much emotional immaturity is on display here and how this is the real essence of dysfunction, which is the essentially the point of this film--the display of neurotic dysfunction. Again, it's only because it's done with so much subtlety and finesse and smarts that I gave this a four-star rating.

Baumbach is very smart. But maybe he needs a little more sunshine in his life.