Margot at the Wedding (2007)

	Directed by: Noah Baumbach	COUNTRY USA GENRE Drama/Comedy NORWEGIAN TITLE Margot at the Wedding RUNNING TIME 93 minutes
	Produced by: Scott Rudin
	Written by: Noah Baumbach

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Margot	Nicole Kidman
Pauline	Jennifer Jason Leigh	½
Malcolm	Jack Black
Claude	Zane Pais	½
Ingrid	Flora Cross
Jim	John Turturro	½
Toby	Seth Barrish
Alan	Matthew Arkin
Mr. Vogler	Michael Cullen
Mrs. Vogler	Enid Graham
Vogler son	Justin Roth

Review

There has been a wave of films depicting the results of free-spirited relationships lately. That is, how the offspring of the 69-ers have translated their alternative upbringing into their own idea of pedagogy. Noah Baumbach portrayed this with poignancy and sleight of hand in his feature debut The Squid and the Whale in 2005, but he isn't equally successful in his follow-up Margot at the Wedding. The material is weaker and less relevant than in both Baumbach's previous film and other similar entries in this subgenre.

Like Ryan Murphy's Running With Scissors, Margot At the Wedding plays out like a bleak homage to French New Wave in general and Éric Rohmer in particular. Dysfunctionality and therapeutic/analytic interactions between the characters are the recipe, but Baumbach has little to say, and his characters are dull, lifeless puppets. The only exception is the director's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, who brings some glow into a handful of scenes. Unfortunately, any essence that can be extracted from Baumbach's largely non-narrative writing here requires a lot of goodwill.