Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Directed by Noah Baumbach. I was so, so, so resistant to seeing this movie. I thought it was going to be like a mix of a Wes Anderson movie, a Neil Labute movie, that bad book The Emperor's Children, and "You Can Count on Me" (which, paradoxically, I remember loving, so what's my problem?) I just found the idea of watching a bunch of yuppies unload on each other so un-fun. And I guess now that I've seen this and liked it, I should probably watch "The Squid and the Whale" like everybody says I should.

Nicole Kidman (Margot) and Jennifer Jason Leigh (Pauline) are two sisters with a poisonous relationship who should probably stay very far away from each other, but seem unable to do so. Pauline is about to get married to a sorta loserish guy, Malcolm, played by Jack Black, who, although he is far less successful than Margot at his chosen artistic pursuit, is one of the only people in the movie who seems like he would actually be fun to hang out with. Margot is a terrible person, mean to her poor tween son, critical of everybody, including herself, and unable to stop poking her nose in other people's business. Pauline is less objectionable, but I still found myself wondering why she would put up with her sister's obnoxiousness. The women are at the tail end of their sexual desirability, or at least they think of themselves as being there, and that influences their relationships with each other and with men. However, you get the sense that they may have been crazy when they were young as well, which saves the movie from being one which points fingers at addled, high-strung middle-aged women (a vulnerable demographic indeed, and one which I will inhabit within the decade or so, so I'm sensitive).

Overall, the dialogue clicks, there's enough happening without the movie being overloaded with event, and the movie, and the planned wedding, take place on an unnamed island in New England, where the family has an old beach house of the genteelly shabby type. This made me pleasantly homesick.