Margot At The Wedding (15) **** - Ashlie Atkinson, Jack Black, Flora Cross, Halley Feiffer, Ciarn Hinds, Nicole Kidman, Zane Pias and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
TALENETED writer/director Noah Baumbachâs follow-up to the excellent The Squid And The Whale may not be in the same league as that 2005 film, but it is still an accomplished dissection of fractious family relationships.
When novelist Margot Zeller (Nicole Kidman) takes her son Claude (Zane Pais) to sister Pauline's (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is just about to marry struggling artist Malcolm (Jack Black), everything seems perfectly friendly on the surface.
But as the couple's big day draws closer, it becomes apparent that Margot is adept and stirring and putting noses out of joint.
A wedding is a perfect background to showcase familial dysfunction, where embarrassing relatives can wreak total havoc. And so it goes with Margot At The Wedding.
Kidman, as she showed so well recently in The Golden Compass, is the perfect ice maiden.
Her Margot is rotten to the core, manipulative, egocentric and with no redeeming features.
Even her motivations are never explained which only add to her aura of evil.
Although fans of the The Squid And The Whale may be disappointed Baumbach couldn't top or equal the earlier film, they certainly won't feel too short changed by this enjoyable movie.
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