Margot at the Wedding.

"Margot at the Wedding, which opens Friday, has already prompted some inquiries about whether it draws on personal history, [Noah] Baumbach said. That may be because it shares thematic elements with [The Squid and the Whale] - separation, adultery, adolescent sexuality - and is likewise focused on intrafamily alliances and intergenerational relationships," writes Dennis Lim in the New York Times. "But the new film, centered on a country-house reunion, has a more volatile emotional temperature."

And in an audio slide show, Baumbach talks about some of the themes he was interested in exploring when writing the film.

Updated through 11/18.

"Leaving behind Squid's relatable adolescent's-eye view on divorce for a hackneyed, adult-oriented dysfunctional family dynamic, and replacing Squid's modest realism for incongruent deep-shadow gothic, Margot attempts more but really offers less," writes Michael Joshua Rowin at indieWIRE. "Inasmuch, Baumbach's weaknesses are devastatingly exposed - the compassion he once showed toward his neurotic characters, starting from his 1995 debut, Kicking and Screaming, has turned into rancor. Margot at the Wedding is mean-spirited, and its insufficient attempts at humor underline a tonal imbalance that hasn't before been present in a Baumbach film - a depressing thing to witness."

"There's a vibrant tradition of plays and films in which invasive guests dredge up all the household's buried traumas," writes David Edelstein. "Usually, though, there's a baseline of order, however shaky. Margot at the Wedding doesn't develop; it just skips from one squirmy scene to the next." Also in New York, a chart from Lane Brown and Dan Kois: "Downer Films."

"There are many ways of frustrating and boring an audience, but setting up a bunch of characters who are so inept that they can't hit a croquet ball, or run through the woods without tripping, or chop down a tree without the tree's landing on a wedding tent may be the most infuriating way of all," writes David Denby in the New Yorker. "Margot is sensually as well as dramatically impoverished."

Earlier: an NYFF podcast with Mike D'Angelo and reviews from Toronto and NYFF.

Update: "Do you know people who act as scathingly as this?" Aaron Hillis asks Baumbach at IFC News.

Update, 11/13: "An immersion in sibling malice and simmering resentment, with one of the most infuriating characters in recent movies holding us under, Margot tramples the commandment that only the pure of heart and noble of deed are worth a viewer's scrutiny," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. "Hard as it may be to imagine a comedy that inflicts all the psychic torment of Cries and Whispers, Baumbach has pulled off a more psychologically acute - and funnier - version of the Bergman pastiches that Woody Allen attempted 30 years ago, with a jumpy, nerve-rattling rhythm all his own."

Updates, 11/14: "The candid Baumbach touch makes more of what's, at base, a rather standard, holiday-movie premise, a visitor returning to a packed (Northeast) house and catalyzing the family/spousal sagas," writes Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine. "Eric Rohmer and his fine-tuned emotional-behavioral miniatures are the obvious touchstone: the thorny byways and cul-de-sacs of love, resentment, despair and fraught dialogue that distills so much."

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Baumbach "about the autobiographical aspects of his work, his love of Yellow Submarine, and the legendary director he and Wes Anderson call 'Pop.'" Might not be your first guess, by the way.

Updates, 11/15: The Reeler's ST VanAirsdale talks with Baumbach, too.

Peter Knegt talks with Baumbach for indieWIRE.

Cinematical's James Rocchi talks with Jennifer Jason Leigh.

"Margot is a fleet, strangely enjoyable film, animated by the acuity of Baumbach's perceptions and - this helps a lot - the frequent laugh-out-loud wit of his dialogue," writes Premiere's Glenn Kenny. "The filmmaker is only gaining in assurance as both a writer and director; this picture brought to mind Rohmer's work of the early to mid-80s, if Rohmer were more depressive and had a nastier social circle."

"Margot at the Wedding is as notable for what it avoids getting wrong as what it does right," writes Steve Erickson for Gay City News. "At times, it recalls the brief moment in the late 90s when Neil LaBute and Todd Solondz's misanthropic visions seemed like a breath of fresh air in American cinema. Yet even as it milks dysfunctional families for humor, it avoids seeming sadistic itself, partially because it never treats any individual character as a wholly innocent - much less pathetic - victim."

Updates, 11/16: "Margot at the Wedding is often mercilessly, squirm-inducingly funny," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Mr Baumbach, the child of literary parents, has an unfailing ear for the idioms of the intelligentsia and an acute sense of family politics.... The Gallic influence is evident not only in the quick, sometimes abrupt cuts between scenes and the intimate, breathless camera work, but also in the way the film is entirely absorbed in the particulars of its characters and their world."

"Despite the apparent shift toward naturalism that began with The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach remains at heart a consummate caricaturist; no adult in the real world speaks as heedlessly and cruelly as does his bevy of hyperintellectual neurotics," writes Mike D'Angelo for Nerve. "At the end, your stomach may not ache from laughing - the humor is subtler than that - but your shoulders will be sore from wincing."

"Margot has a kitchen-sink realism that's genuinely unsettling, like a John Cassavetes movie populated by the hyper-articulate," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "If nothing else, Baumbach deserves credit for refusing to cozy up to the audience."

"Baumbach presents incisive portraits, not flattering ones, and he refuses to sanitize the unpleasant ways in which people allow their harshest qualities to hang out in the open with family," writes Kristi Mitsuda at Stop Smiling. "But his compassion comes through via careful shadings of character: Alluding to Margot's domestic traumas, including a decaying marriage and her son's burgeoning adolescence, he makes understandable how such a person might use her cerebral tendencies and competitive streak as armor, a way to maintain distance and mastery over emotional turmoil."

Updates, 11/17: ""Noah Baumbach thinks he's funny, though his intermittent gags fizzle painfully," writes Richard Schickel for Time. "He also thinks - and this is his larger sin - that he is a serious fellow, which he definitely is not. He is merely unhappy in a vague and annoying post-graduate sort of way. He's the kind of filmmaker who thinks that if he sets his star to masturbating on camera, he's making a statement, when all he's actually doing is signifying the true spirit of his movie."

It's bad enough that the movie is about uninteresting people's problems," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "What's worse is that it's about snobs, and Baumbach buys into their snobbery. The neighbors "are presented as morons with no manners - they wind up being the movie's way of reassuring us that rich people may be messed up, but the unwashed masses aren't what they're cracked up to be, either. The attitude is superior at best and cheap and stupid at worst." Oh, and another thing: "[E]ven though Kidman claims, in the current issue of Marie Claire, that she is "completely natural," there's no way around the question: What has she done to her face? The question of actors (men and women) and plastic surgery is a delicate one, but at this point, it's disingenuous to pretend not to notice any change.... [M]ore and more actresses are choosing beauty over expressiveness, as if the two were mutually exclusive. If only there were a way to make them see that they're mutilating not just their faces but their talent."

Marcy Dermansky finds the opening scenes "so sharp and funny and good, that it's upsetting to report that the film cannot maintain its momentum, but flails and flounders, before finally giving way to a deluge of histrionics and an unsatisfying conclusion."

"While Margot at the Wedding is certainly a smart and honestly ugly film, with well-toned dialogue and an acute understanding of neurotic compulsion, it's hard to see it as anything but a minor piece of work; a stop-off on Baumbach's road to (hopefully) bigger things," writes Chris Barsanti at Filmcritic.com.

Update, 11/18: For the LAT, Chris Lee meets Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Posted by dwhudson at November 12, 2007 2:47 AM