The Frame

Aw, Noah Baumbach, what are you doing to me?! I’d heard the bad reviews for this, his newest film, but somehow I convinced myself that the writer/director of Kicking and Screaming and The Squid and the Whale couldn’t possibly make a subpar film, right? Wrong. Nicole Kidman plays Margot, a cynical, bitter writer who takes her teenage son to her estranged sister’s wedding (to a man who disgusts Margot). Then there’s supposed to be some deep interfamilial and personal reevaluation, except that never happens. Instead, we get only a lot of uncomfortable scenes strung together by uncomfortable silences, and while I’m not generally against uncomfortableness in films, there’s nothing to offset it or make it worthwhile. The dialogue feels stilted, and I don’t know who to blame. Kidman actually does a really good job acting the part physically, but as soon as she opens her mouth, everything falls flat. But the dialogue isn’t really bad, either – I can see why someone reading the script would be attracted to it. Somewhere between page and screen it died, though. Perhaps Baumbach isn’t as good an actor’s director as he needs to be. Also, the complete lack of score actually works against the film, despite Baumbach and Leigh’s protestations that score would’ve ruined it (in a conversation on the DVD) – while score does, as they point out, manipulate the audience, it also gives the audience empathy. I could hardly have cared less about what happened to these people, and I wanted to. Badly.
Below Average