lord, i’d hate to meet Noah Baumbach’s family. it’s possible, of course, that they’re perfectly lovely people, worlds removed from the walking psychological time bombs that populate his films, but that would make Baumbach the greatest screenwriter of his generation, an honor I’m not ready to bestow on the co-writer of The Life Aquatic. Margot At The Wedding, a worthy spiritual sequel to his excruciatingly perceptive commercial/psychiatric breakthrough The Squid And The Whale, again examines the dynamics of familial dysfunction, but on a far more bothersome level than the affected quirk typical of similar American indies; Baumbach’s voice as a filmmaker has by now clearly emerged through his ruthless examination of the thoughts and feelings we do our best to hide from the people we love, but slip out nonetheless. where Squid centered on the emotional and intellectual angst of a teen facing his parents’ divorce, Margot At The Wedding focuses instead on the adult product of such psychological sabotage, a failed mother and wife who retreats to her own high horse on the eve of her estranged sister’s wedding. as character studies go, few in recent memory have been as penetrative as Nicole Kidman’s manipulative, desolate Margot, and Baumbach meets his performers halfway with a visual flatness that’s nearly as ugly as the emotions in play, but naturalistic in a way that serves the material. the overall result is less striking than The Squid And The Whale, but only because he seems to be striving to make his characters here as real as their feelings; that the film is unshowy makes it that much more subversive, and leaves us afraid of what Noah Baumbach might strip from our minds and hearts next time around.
(from the KNOXVILLE VOICE)
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