Critics reviews

The results waver from dreamy to grating and back, but I won't soon forget Williams whooshing across the screen in a carnival ride to "Video Killed the Radio Star" or trying not to lose control of her smile as she grows more and more moist before Kirby's erotic monologue.

In many ways, Margot is a modern day Blanche DuBois, implicitly echoing the latter's cry that "I don't want realism… I want magic! Yes, yes, magic!" Yet ultimately, the bittersweet truth of Polley's beautiful film is that it's inevitable: no matter who we love, we are always ourselves, and with it we are always alone.

The movie is little but an extended romantic tease leading to an inevitable conclusion which is rendered all the more obvious by a series of plot points displaying the old-shoe ordinariness of the husband. The over-intentionalized screenplay is matched by the performances, and the cinematography lurches between blank and purple, with almost nothing in between. Yet the movie is compelling, precisely for its doctrinaire and deterministic elements.

There's so much that's right about the film: the Altman-like hustle and bustle of its party scenes, a ravishingly erotic "what I'd do to you in bed" monologue, the most pathos-infused use of "Video Killed the Radio Star" ever. Yet Polley's dialogue is often unbearably clumsy—Margot admits to having problems making "connections" (she means airplane connections… No, really).