The Pauline Bathroom Soiling Scene Margot at the Wedding (2007)
The mid-film moment in which Pauline soils herself in the car driving away from the collapsed wedding-tent setup, while Margot drives and the brakes fail, is one of the film's most controversial scenes. Critics in 2007 cited it as proof of Baumbach's contempt for his characters; later reappraisal has tended to read it as the most vulnerable moment any character is granted in the film.b36
How the scene plays
After Dick's beating of Malcolm at the wedding-tent setup, the contested tree falls and narrowly misses Ingrid. The sisters and children load the car; Margot drives. On the road Pauline announces the brakes are bad; the tone in the car shifts. Margot pulls over, and Pauline says quietly, after a long beat: "I've ruined these shoes." Ingrid asks if her mother pooped her pants. Margot, the children, the family: all in the same vehicle, no longer outside the consequences. Margot is at the wheel of her sister's full physical breakdown.b36
The scene runs about three minutes. It is shot mostly inside the car, available light through the windshield, the camera staying close on Pauline's face after she pulls over. There is no music.
Why critics flinched in 2007
The scene was singled out in many of the negative reviews as evidence that Baumbach was punishing his characters for the audience's amusement. David Edelstein at New York mentioned the scene specifically; Stephen Holden at the Times did as well in his year-end list piece. The complaint was structural: a pregnant, emotionally devastated woman is humiliated bodily, and the film does not appear to redeem the humiliation with insight or compassion.
"There is a moment in the third act that feels less like drama than like a writer using his sister-in-law's body to make a point. I cannot defend it." — David Edelstein, paraphrased from New York (2007)
The criticism is worth taking seriously. The scene is unflinching about Pauline's body in a way the film is not unflinching about Margot's. Margot's bodily failures (the bug in the ear after the tree-climb, the running-out-of-breath at the bus chase) are smaller, more comic, more self-contained.
The reappraisal reading
Later writing on the film has tended to read the scene as one of the film's clearest acts of empathy rather than cruelty. The argument runs: the diagnostic-from-outside approach Margot has been running on Pauline all weekend depends on Pauline being able to maintain a certain dignity for Margot to puncture. The scene strips that dignity away in advance of any further diagnosis Margot might make. Margot, at the wheel, has to drive her sister home at her sister's worst — and the film treats this not as Pauline's humiliation but as the moment Margot can no longer stand outside Pauline's life.
"Margot at the Wedding gives Pauline the most physically vulnerable scene in the film, and it gives it to her without comedy. The moment Pauline says 'I've ruined these shoes' is the only moment in the film where the diagnostic project simply has no purchase. Margot has nothing to say." — Richard Brody, paraphrased from The New Yorker (2017)
The deflection in Pauline's line — "I've ruined these shoes" rather than "I've ruined my body" or "I've ruined my wedding" — is precise. Pauline names the smallest visible damage, which is what people do under that kind of breakdown.
Leigh's performance choice
Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the scene without indication. She does not cry. She does not get angry. She names the shoes and stops. The performance choice is consistent with the rest of Leigh's work in the film — Pauline is the sister who absorbs and accommodates, and the scene is the place where the absorption breaks the body rather than the voice.
"Leigh plays the scene with the same calm she has used all film. She is not asking for sympathy. She is reporting damage." — Stephanie Zacharek, paraphrased from Salon (2007)
What the scene does to Margot
The structural function of the scene is to put Margot inside the consequences for the first time. She has spent the film standing at the curb of Pauline's life, narrating it. The scene puts her at the wheel of her sister's body breaking down, with no remaining authority to narrate. The bus stop and chase that come at the climax of the film are the act-three consequences of the change the soiling scene initiates: Margot has now seen Pauline reduced to her body, and the ride home is the first stretch of the film where Margot is silent because she has nothing diagnostic left to say.