In a family gathering of characters that tests their — and our — tolerance for dysfunction, Pauline touches a chord.
It’s her wedding that sister and title character Margot attends in Noah Baumbach’s keen comedy “Margot at the Wedding,” co-starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nicole Kidman.
Pauline is marrying slumpy Malcolm (Jack Black wearing a kind of goofy facial hair).
“If you’re wondering about the moustache,” he begins telling Margot, “it’s meant to be funny.”
Margot doesn’t approve of him. This is just the first confirmation of the sisters’ prickly history.
An obvious question to ask Leigh might have been, “Was there a Margot at your wedding?”
After all, Leigh and writer- director-husband Baumbach were married the summer before he received a flurry of kudos for his 2005 memoir-infused comedy, “The Squid and the Whale.”
But their pairing poses a better line of questions that has to do with the mysterious dance of actors and directors.
A gifted observer, Baumbach admits he’s prone to “battling with the script.”
Given that struggle, it’s good to have someone working your corner.
“He really doesn’t know where something is going, he doesn’t write that way. He’ll feel around. Basically, we live it, talk about it,” said Leigh.
Leigh’s been impossible to ignore since “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982). And her filmography of rich roles boasts one of the spookiest villains to answer a classified ad (“Single White Femaile”) and one of the most courageous depictions of thwarted hopes.
In “Georgia,” written by her mother, Barbara Turner, Leigh was the barroom-singing sis of a popular folk singer, played by Mare Winningham.
Again, when you’re trying to do great work, it’s good to have an artistic ally.
“With another director, I may have a take on a scene that’s vastly different than the director’s. Then you have to do that negotiation with yourself.”
The bargaining sounds something like this: “OK, I’ve liked this director’s work in the past, so I have to give over something. I want to give him what he wants but I completely disagree. How do I navigate this? How do I get there. Do I show him what I want and maybe he’ll like it.”
It’s a lot of bartering.
“We don’t have any of that,” she said. “I know he’s in my corner. I know we share a distinct sensibility. We like the same movies. We like the same type of acting.”
One of those movies is Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage.” John Cassavetes, comes up, too, which puts one in the mind of a vital wife-husband collaboration, Gena Rowlands and Cassavetes.
“I’m not saying we always agree,” Leigh added, “but when he asks for something I can trust that what he wants is probably something I would ultimately want too.
“It’s probably easier for him to get me to places than other directors, because there’s so much trust. It’s a really good creative partnership. Sort of my idealized version, like a kid’s perspective of what marriage can be. Now it’s actually real and I’m loving it.”
The year has been a rich one, she says. On stage she appeared in Charlie Kaufman’s “Hope Leaves the Theater” and Mike Leigh’s “Abigail’s Party.” Next year, she’ll be onscreen in Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.”
Over the course of “Margot,” it becomes clear Margot is one of those fiction writers with a galling habit of appropriating all personal experiences for her short stories.
“You cannot write about this,” Pauline says, snatching a journal out of Margot’s hand. “You can’t have it.”
The daughter of the late actor Vic Morrow and writer Turner, she’s no stranger to art heisting life.
Even in “The Anniversary Party,” which Leigh co-wrote and co-directed with Alan Cumming, people treated the fiction film like a roman a clef.
“People think that things are about them that have nothing to do with them,” she said. “Then there are things that are about them that the person doesn’t want to admit are about them.
“Hey I grew up with a writer,” she said. “And I know all the ways around it. But certainly there are things I’d fight not to have written.”
Which begs for a follow-up question — one that, of course, shouldn’t be posed and won’t be answered.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
