"Margot" at the unpleasant, dysfunctional wedding

If all movies were entirely concerned with nice, admirable people, nobody would watch them — how interesting would the spectacle of a bunch of nice people be, after a while? So I've always thought, when hearing people say that they didn't like a movie because the characters weren't likable. And yet, after watching Noah Baumbach's "Margot at the Wedding," I'm finding some sympathy for that point of view. Essentially, it's 90 minutes spent in the company of some excruciatingly unpleasant personalities, and dimly lit ones at that.

This isn't to say it's a terrible movie: Baumbach, who made the grim but effective divorce drama "The Squid and the Whale," has impeccable control, and "Margot" squirmingly captures the chemistry of a very dysfunctional family. At its center are two sisters, Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh), reunited at the family home — a rambling, disorganized place that hints at old money — on an unnamed East Coast island. Pauline is engaged to a deadpan loser (Jack Black), and Margot, a New York writer whose own marriage is unraveling, has arrived with her almost-teenage son Claude (Zane Pais) for the wedding.

The title, the waterfront setting and Leigh's character's name all hint at an homage to Eric Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach," but this film never finds anything close to Rohmer's lightness. Margot, a breathy know-it-all, sets out to squelch any possible happiness; telling her sister that the marriage is a mistake, scolding her own husband (John Turturro, in a brief appearance) for buying her a present she already has, and telling her son — with whom she has a no-boundaries relationship — that he's getting less attractive. (In perhaps the saddest comment a preadolescent boy has ever made in the movies, Claude glumly tells a cousin who notices his budding mustache, "My mother bleaches it for me.")

The actors are all good (particularly Pais, who's so effective as an kid uncomfortable in his skin you can barely look at him), which contributes to the claustrophobic feeling of the movie — Baumbach pulls us in close to the characters, yet never is able to interest us in these brittle people's fates. The look of the film is self-consciously blurry and unappealing, with even the waterfront setting looking as chilly as the iced wine Margot's constantly sipping. Ultimately, you'll wish you could get on that ferry long before the characters finally do.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com