'Margot at the Wedding' opens Nov. 21

BY GLENN WHIPP>FILM WRITER

Filmmaker Noah Baumbach doesn't see himself getting tagged as a purveyor of fractured families.

"They're just families," Baumbach says. "They're not any more messed up than most families are."

Well, let's see. Baumbach's last movie, the semi-autobiographical "The Squid and the Whale," followed a family whose children suffered (sometimes comically) from their divorcing parents' casual (and, yes, comic) cruelty.

In "Margot at the Wedding," the combatants are sisters - the neurotic Margot (Nicole Kidman) and free-spirit Pauline (played by Baumbach's wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh). They meet on the eve of Pauline's wedding and, naturally, Margot does not approve of her future brother-in-law (Jack Black).

The resulting fireworks create a movie that Leigh says "leaves people almost unable to speak. Or they're very angry, very stirred up."

The tension between the sisters was so palpable that, after filming their first big scene together, both Kidman and Leigh became physically ill.

"I guess that's good, right?" Baumbach says. "Certainly, it speaks to their commitment to the parts. Neither of them are ones to gloss over what they're feeling."

Baumbach cautions that neither sister can be easily described and that the audience's perceptions of the characters may change over the course of the movie.

"Most movies don't do that, but I think it's great to have the audience adjust their feelings about characters," he says.

"The idea is to create characters that aren't easily defined or sympathetic. Just real."

Baumbach didn't write Pauline for his wife, but once the character started to form, he thought it would be a great opportunity for them to work together.

"Jennifer was really involved with `Squid,' so working together and collaborating wasn't altogether new," Baumbach says. "It was more of an adjustment for Nicole to come into this existing relationship. So we had to work out this triangle, and I think we succeeded."