| Overall Grade: |
B- |
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| Story: |
C+ |
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| Acting: |
B+ |
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| Direction: |
B |
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| Visuals: |
C+ |
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The Spotty Character Arcs of Dysfunctional Sisters
by Ed (movies profile)
Feb 24, 2008
2
of
2 people found this review helpful
Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s oeuvre seems to be persistently monitoring the untidiness of human foibles within a dysfunctional family and showing how decisions made by one character trigger unexpected and often unsavory actions from others. He focused on the repercussions of an ugly divorce in 2005’s “The Squid and the Whale”, and in this off-kilter 2007 film, he captures the messiness generated by the discomfiting relationship between two nearly estranged sisters. What I like about both films is what I ironically don’t like about them - the idiosyncratic, often redundant way that Baumbach makes his way through the narrative thread of a story. It feels a bit like a docu-dramedy but with obvious set-ups for the characters to reveal some flaw about themselves. Fortunately, he is quite good at this realistic level of observant detail in his direction and his screenplay; and his two leads, Nicole Kidman and Baumbach’s wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, are quite adept as the sisters.
Kidman plays the title role, a renowned, Manhattan-based short story writer who decides to take her pre-pubescent son Claude back to her family’s beach house which her sister Pauline now owns. Pauline is getting hastily married to a garrulous, unemployed “letter writer” named Malcolm, a man Margot already detests before meeting him. It turns out that Margot is there not only for the wedding but to connect with her lover, also a successful writer, who lives nearby with his nubile daughter. More undisclosed facts come stumbling out from both sisters that quickly expose their relationship as a quagmire of latent resentments and petty jealousies. With her passive-aggressive narcissism, Margot initiates the lion’s share of the manipulative tactics to validate her own worth. After several commercial debacles, the worst being the “Bewitched” update, it’s good to see Kidman do such strong, subtle work here. Unafraid to show Margot’s ugly machinations, Kidman still manages to show her character’s vulnerability in unexpected ways.
As perennially unhappy Pauline, Leigh has played variations on this role before, but she is expert at portraying such disheveled, approval-seeking personalities. Once again, Jack Black is in over his head as Malcolm, playing the comic elements on the surface and experiencing a personal catharsis that is laughable in a misguided way. Baumbach is especially good navigating child actors within an emotionally complex world, and wide-eyed Zane Pais (who looks like a member of the bubble-gum pop group Hanson) as Claude is no exception. In too-brief roles, John Turturro and Ciaràn Hands show up as Margot’s patient husband and insensitive lover, respectively. Other than the original trailers and various previews, the 2008 DVD only has one extra, a brief interview between Baumbach and Leigh talking about the script and the production, especially working with Kidman and Black. |
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