"If I could read your handwriting, I'd be furious."
"Make sure you can handle rejection. I can't."
"He's not ugly. He's just completely unattractive."
The quotes above come from Noah Baumbach's new film, Margot at the Wedding, showcasing the emphasis the writer-director continues to place on dialogue. Like a Ray Davies song, each of his meticulously crafted scenes includes one key line amidst their tossed-off jokes and non-sequiturs. This skill at penning memorable quotations was first highlighted with the word bubbles on the Criterion edition DVD of Baumbach's debut Kicking and Screaming, and has come to fruition in this fantastic dark comedy.
Of course, no dialogue can work without a capable cast to deliver it. This film's new faces and dressed-down stars come through in spades. Nicole Kidman, almost two decades into her film career but aging like a fine wine, steals the show as the erratic, lava-tongued Margot. Jennifer Jason Leigh, who hasn't done much since Todd Solondz's Palindromes (2004), plays her free-spirited, estranged sister Pauline, set to marry the schlubby Malcolm (Jack Black). John Turturro makes a brief but successful cameo as Margot's husband Jim, and newcomers Zane Pais and Flora Cross are first-rate as the kids caught in the middle of it all.
Like his peer Wes Anderson's latest, The Darjeeling Limited, Baumbach begins this film on a train. Margot and her long-haired, somewhat androgynous son Claude (Pais) are travelling to the wedding of a relative they haven't seen or talked to in years. From the moment she sets her steely eyes on her mustachioed brother-in-law to be, Margot clearly hates him.
Sadly, this opinion will likely be carried over to the actor behind Malcolm as well. As funny as Black is in places here, the comedian is woefully miscast and far too cartoonish for this wry, realistic story. His manic outbursts might have been written in as broad comedic relief for the attention span-deficient masses, but they are unnecessary and detract from the story.
Happily, this is the only major complaint that can be lobbed at the film. As it begins, the characters and their relationships seem at least somewhat stable and reasonable. However, the more you get to know Margot, Pauline, Malcolm and Claude, the more clearly their neuroses come into focus. Like real-life family members, they can be simultaneously caring and callous, keeping some secrets while sharing the most damaging ones openly. The most obvious behavioural tic is how Margot projects onto Claude, criticizing and rejecting him when she feels stomped on, but this is just one thread in her tangled web.
Like Anderson, Baumbach has begun to develop his own distinct vision and vocabulary with his films, carrying over the same explicit content, the use of a Blondie song ("Heart of Glass" was also used in Kicking and Screaming) and the theme of familial disintegration he explored with 2005's The Squid and the Whale. With Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach has crafted his best effort yet, one that will entertain, send shivers down your spine and stick with you like a sibling rivalry.
