Margot (Nicole Kidman) attends the wedding of her
sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). They bicker.
That's pretty much it. That's the movie.
Run end credits.
What can I tell you? Women are easily amused.
Margot writes short stories for a magazine a lot like The New Yorker. She
irritates her family and friends because
she weaves her plots from incidents in their lives, more often than not
portraying them negatively. We all know someone like Margot. She is
self-centered, self-righteous, and insists that she knows how everyone else
should live their lives, even though her own life is in miserable disarray and
every bit of advice she offers is so grievously wrong as to be downright
dangerous to anyone foolish enough to pay attention to her. Fortunately for
those on the receiving side of her admonitions, she is so utterly lacking in
charm and sanity that everyone tunes her out. Even so, she
can still hurt people by betraying secrets and confidences. Her sister Pauline
is more likeable than Margot, but only in the same sense that Rosie O'Donnell
is more likeable than Stalin. Pauline is fortunate enough that her main curse
is neurotic insecurity rather than psychotic malice. The two sisters quarrel
about everything possible, often in front of their children, thus assuring
that their proud family heritage of dysfunction will be passed to another
generation. For the first ten minutes of the film I was wondering why Margot
was calling her teenage daughter Claude. I thought maybe it was short for
Claudine or Claudette. Then I heard her refer to Claude as "he" and I finally
got the point. I began to get a bit too much of the point later on when I saw
that Margot's relationship with the boy was implicitly incestuous, albeit not
expressed in overt sexual terms. They kiss on the lips, they sleep together
... even though the boy is old enough to masturbate. Margot's son is so shy
and sensitive and feminine that we cringe when we find that he'll have to go
to public school, knowing he will never make it until noon with any lunch
money.
Since the film has no point that I can see, I
suppose it is an autobiographical character study and the script writer is
doing exactly what his character Margot was accused of: airing out his family's laundry on a
convenient literary clothesline. Why not? It's probably good therapy for him,
and I guess there is room in the film world for stories about neurotic
Northeastern literati and their assorted foibles. Lord knows Woody Allen has
created a lot of films from similar clay. But there are two big differences
between this film and Woody's: (1) Woody's films always include characters
with a sense of humor; (2) Woody's best plots incorporate some interesting
situations. Because of those two characteristics, Woody's films are
(sometimes) interesting to those outside the club. In contrast, Margot at the Wedding is
just filled with humorless bores and wimps, so the only possible audience
consists of other boring, humorless Northeasterners with friends and family
among the arty set. Anyone not among that group will wonder why the film was
made in the first place.
If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to
read the
explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by
our definition, a
C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs
and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:
