Reviews: "Margot at the Wedding," "The Red Balloon," and "White Mane"

By Dennis Harvey

Dysfunctional family, dysfunctional film

It’s with great disappointment I report that “Margot at the Wedding,” Noah Baumbach’s follow-up dramedy, is not only nowhere near as sharp as its predecessor, “The Squid and the Whale,” but a failure in its own right. 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. 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.

[SF360.org editor’s note: This review was originally published in indieWIRE on Nov. 12, 2007. The film opens in the Bay Area this week. Two more reviews follow, below.]

“Margot”‘s title character is a successful, icy, know-it-all author (Nicole Kidman, in a physically embodied performance) who along with androgynous teenage son Claude (Zane Pais) visits sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) out in the Hamptons on the family estate for the latter’s imminent wedding to initially lovable, and then not-so-lovable, loser Malcolm (Jack Black). Margot, we quickly learn, is at the center of her family’s deep discord — she hasn’t spoken to Pauline in years, is on the verge of divorce, and doesn’t get along with the rest of the family. Whether her bossiness — condescendingly insulting everyone, including Claude, uncovering flaws even in her sister’s stereotyped backwoods neighbors, and using the wedding as an excuse to meet up with a lover (Cirian Hands) — is the cause of her alienation or whether it’s the other way around is the film’s only subtle exploration. Everything else, from each character’s couple of personality traits (Malcolm = immature and inappropriate; Pauline = insecure and weak-willed) to the obvious symbolism (the literal rotting family tree that Margot gets stuck in while climbing and that falls toward film’s end), is painfully telegraphed by screenwriting shorthand. Baumbach’s films have always played like vehicles for overstylized scripts — though their shortcomings have been difficult to ignore, I’ve chosen to look past their eager-to-please smartness and found myself charmed. But here the jokes, barbs, and psychological warfare are too academic, placed into the characters’ mouths with more concern for the sting of their bite than the motivations and consequences of the bitten.

More cause for consternation: “Margot” is shocking for containing nary an event or interaction that corresponds to anything resembling real life, and this from a director often so good at representing the sad hilarity of awkward moments. Take for example the aforementioned tree collapse, which is only one disaster in a scene that features several revealed secrets, a tearful plea by Malcolm (Black shoulders the little comedy that works but proves he still has a ways to go as a dramatic actor), and a beat down. Loading down his film with an assortment of humiliations, embarrassments, simplistic psychoanalysis, and frank sex and bathroom conversation, Baumbach makes sure the dysfunctional vectors of “Margot” fail to convince collectively as well as separately. Claude, the film’s most sympathetic character, is lost amidst the fracas, and once his development and his mother’s effect on it is left to the wayside for some thinly sketched adolescent adventures there’s not much left to care for. Only Harris Savides’s melancholic under-lit cinematography succeeds, draping the cast in deep shadows at night and erasing the glow of sunshine in the day. Yet even these effects feel out of place, better suited to the Eric Rohmer or Woody Allen films “Margot” wishes to be rather than the dull comedy of mortification it really is.

“The Red Balloon,” a pretty pony, and the 12-year-old inside us all

No two childhoods are alike, but some experiences are so common they’re nearly universal. Ask almost anyone who grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, and it’s likely they’ve got a memory of “The Red Balloon” — a 36-minute French movie from 1956 that, improbably, was, for decades, most likely the film most seen by more kids around the world than any other. (Excepting, perhaps, a Disney title or three.) I could swear I saw it on “The Kukla, Fran and Ollie” TV show during my way-pre-adolescent years, though there’s not a whole lot else I remember from back then. It made a definite impression.

Now “The Red Balloon” is back, along with “White Mane,” another featurette from the era by writer-director Albert Lamorisse. If you saw one or the other as a wee tot, prepare for a major dose of nostalgia. If not, by all means make up for lost time, and bring any kids you know along. There are some things you should never be too old to experience, and “The Red Balloon” is one of them.

Lamorisse’s conceit is so simple it should be insipid — or at least insufficient to float more than a five-minute short. A little boy (played by the director’s son Pascal) spies a large, rosy balloon tethered to the top of a Parisian lamppost. Shimmying up to claim it, he enjoys a day out with the bouncing orb-but upon returning home, the housekeeper simply tosses it off the apartment’s balcony.

The balloon won’t give up so easily, though. It hovers near, unwilling to leave its new human friend — though now that it’s demonstrated a mind of its own, it refuses to be held by string, preferring instead to simply float independently alongside the boy as he roams the city, even chasing alongside a streetcar he’s boarded. It taunts a teacher who’d mean to Pascal, flirts with a little girl’s blue balloon, gets kidnapped by some nasty boys.

With very little dialogue and boundless charm, “The Red Balloon” transcends all cultural barriers — despite the flavorful specificity of its Paris setting. Pascal Lamorisse is a guileless natural who never seems to be “acting.” The trickery that enables the balloon’s “free” movements remains ingenious. Edmond Sechan’s photography is perfect, Maurice Leroux’s score enchanting. “The Red Balloon” has drama, humor, poignancy, originality, even social commentary. Its magical final minutes will move you whether you’re 4 or 84.
“Balloon” won a slew of international prizes in 1956, and was widely seen for many years. Lamorisse’s “White Mane,” made three years earlier, is comparatively little known (though it too won festival prizes, and was nearly as famous in France). But it’s got something “Red Balloon” doesn’t: Ponies. Lots and lots of very pretty ponies. Call me a closeted 12-year-old girl if you must, but admit it: Ponies are the best!!!

“White Mane” is a feisty wild colt captured by wranglers in the near-desert South of France La Camarague region. They try in vain to tame it, but the stallion kicks their asses and escapes. Boy fisherman Folco (Alain Emery), who lives with his gramps, younger sister and pet flamingo (?!) in a lakeside hut, becomes fascinated by the beautiful, stubborn beast, becoming its new best friend and savior.

It’s no surprise B&W “White Mane” traveled less widely than “Balloon” — it’s far grittier, with a child protagonist fending for himself in rough circumstances, and some hard-to-watch footage of stallions biting and kicking each other in a fight for herd supremacy. This isn’t the cute nature realm of Disney’s concurrent True-Life Adventure films, “documentaries” which were beautifully crafted but now suffer from the tarnished reputation of exposed editorial and critter manipulation. “Mane” portrays a world made cruel mostly by humanity — when the French cowboys can’t recapture the elusive horse by lasso, they simply set fir to the grasslands, hoping to smoke Mane out.

These two movies are surprisingly similar at core: Both center on a pure-hearted child’s determination to save the independent-minded entity he’s befriended from hostile forces who covet the exotic “pet.” They’ll destroy it if they can’t have it for themselves.

Newly restored by Pascal Lamorisse — who touchingly says “I wanted to pay homage to the memory of my father who was a poet, a partner and a loving parent” — “Red Balloon” is subtitled, while “White Mane” has an English-language narrator. Both are so short on dialogue that no one should avoid taking children for fear of their not fully grokking the content.

[Michael Joshua Rowin is a staff writer at Reverse Shot. He also writes for L magazine, Stop Smiling, and runs the blog Hopeless Abandon.
Reprinted with permission, copyright Michael Joshua Rowin, indieWIRE 2007.)

topics: reviews

11.20.2007