Margot at the Wedding (15)
dir: Noah Baumbach

With all the major Hollywood studios now running speciality divisions to oversee anything deemed to be even mildly unorthodox, the idea of independence has become as cosmetic and marketable as a new fragrance. One such studio offshoot, Paramount Vantage, lies behind Margot at the Wedding, a brittle comedy populated by brittle people chipping away at each other's self-esteem. With its hand-held camera, retro costumes and oh-so-uncompromising insights, it's a corporate idea of what an indie film should be.

To the picture's writer-director, Noah Baumbach, family life is what shoot-outs were to Sam Peckinpah: a horrifying spectacle to be catalogued in as much gruesome, lip-smacking detail as possible. Baumbach's splendid last picture, The Squid and the Whale, was an acute, child's-eye comedy about the break-up of a New York literary marriage: it documented cruel behaviour, but never strayed into cruelty itself. Margot at the Wedding is a second stab at similar material that buries the knife into characters and audiences alike. The film's richest achievements, such as Harris Savides's anaemic, Bergmanesque photography, Carol Littleton's abrasive editing and the game performances by the younger cast members, count for nought beside its director's sadism.

Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her boyfriend Malcolm (Jack Black) are the tentatively happy couple planning to wed in the grounds of Pauline's east coast seafront home, which was left to her by her late mother, to the chagrin of her elder sister, the short-story writer Margot (Nicole Kidman). The siblings have resolved to put their grievances behind them, but when Margot arrives with her adolescent son, Claude (Zane Pais), she can scarcely contain her rancour. Poison, disguised as concern or insight, oozes out of her. She asks Malcolm if he has ever noticed that Pauline can't make eye contact, she insists that a friend's child should be tested for autism, and she makes it clear that she disapproves strongly of her sister's aimless fiancé. If only she could shine some of that illuminating candour on to her own life. The first that poor Claude learns of his parents' impending separation is when he sees his mother canoodling openly with her fancy man at a pool party.

You suspect that the film will amount to more than just these random acts of unkindness. Perhaps Margot's spiteful judgements will prove prescient, or the more amenable Pauline will be exposed as the real schemer here. But, with a heavy heart, you begin to realise that Baumbach hasn't bothered to fashion a story, or even a plausible troupe of characters for his illustrious cast to play. Instead, he falls so deeply in love with his own knack for writing catty asides and vile put-downs that he literally bitches himself into a corner. When he needs us to warm to the intolerable Margot, he has to resort to the trick of showing her being humiliated in public by a fellow writer, so cheaply does he think our sympathies can be bought.

A film that expresses contempt for its characters is one thing, but Baumbach is pushing his luck if he expects the audience to put up with the same treatment. The heavy-handed, literary bent of the script should have tipped us off to his incredible facility for condescension. Alarm bells start ringing inevitably when it is announced that Pauline and Malcolm will be getting married beneath the diseased oak tree in the garden, an oak that the neighbours claim is destroying their land. Someone mentions calling the tree surgeon, but a script doctor would be a safer bet.

Baumbach is nothing if not generous in his deployment of rinky-dink symbols and metaphors for the family tensions that endanger Claude. As well as the tree, he serves up a missing dog, a dead dog, a slaughtered pig, a bug lodged in Margot's ear, and that old favourite, the car with no brakes. Dysfunctional families are now the abiding cliché of modern, indie-minded US films, especially since the box-office success of Little Miss Sunshine, and the respect afforded to Wes Anderson (Baumbach's occasional collaborator) and Todd Solondz. But Baumbach needs to work harder to avoid looking like the only chump who doesn't know that the American Beauty bandwagon has left town.

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