If Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney were the squid and the whale, then the title character of Noah Baumbach's even more entertainingly abrasive followup, Margot at the Wedding, must be the piranha. Long estranged from her mousy sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), brittle author Margot (Nicole Kidman) nonetheless journeys from New York City to the Hamptons, sensitive teenage son Claude (Zane Pais) in tow, to celebrate Pauline's impending nuptials. Rapprochement comes hard, however, since Margot openly and caustically disapproves of everything that even momentarily wanders into her field of vision. It doesn't help matters that the groom-to-be, Malcolm (Jack Black), is an unemployed, comically mustachioed slob who speaks with great pride of the many hours he spends each day crafting letters to various editors. But Margot, a practiced verbal archer, has no need of such an easy target, and it's her own ostensibly beloved sister and child who most visibly wither in the chill of her judgment.
Doesn't sound much like a comedy, does it? And yet, as malignant as the film's emotions generally are, Margot at the Wedding somehow plays more like curdled Rohmer than straight Bergman, thanks to Baumbach's precise wit and penchant for droll exaggeration. Margot, as embodied by Kidman in a fearless, vanity-free tour de force, takes tactlessness and insensitivity to such a ludicrous extreme that it's hard not to giggle, if only with astonishment at each fresh offense. 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. (If these people do exist, I don't want them anywhere in my time zone, much less at my wedding.)
At the same time, Baumbach doesn't shy away from the very real wounds such lacerations open up — lingering, in one heartbreaking instance, on Claude's dejected expression after his mother informs him that he's not as graceful as he used to be. It's a tricky balancing act, and while Baumbach occasionally stumbles — I don't really know what's going on with the refugees from Deliverance who live in the woods near Pauline's house, or why Malcolm must be revealed as a quasi-pedophile in addition to a cheerful loser — he also addresses familial strife with a heightened candor that can be hilariously bracing. At the end, your stomach may not ache from laughing — the humor is subtler than that — but your shoulders will be sore from wincing. — Mike D'Angelo