Writer-director Noah Baumbach rattles through family skeletons with such verbal grace that the clatter sounds musical.

In 2005’s criminally overlooked The Squid and the Whale, Baumbach traced his own broken home life among literati whose flaws were self-forgiven while others’ weren’t. The infighting sounded so true that it almost wasn’t funny.

Baumbach delivers variations on the same theme in Margot at the Wedding, a caustic, bleakly comical work likely inspired by the late filmmaker John Cassavetes. Not Cassavetes’ family, which seems more normal than these folks, but his movies in which things left unsaid mean the most, and much of what is said can’t be taken at face value.

Baumbach and a strong cast get too close to all these characters for our comfort. Nicole Kidman is an affecting bundle of nerves; Margot never grasps how terribly she behaves to her autistic son and wallflower sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), putting on a superior air at the slightest hint. Leigh’s mouse that eventually roars is a Spirit Award-nominated performance. Jack Black tones down the crazy just enough to make the grubby groom Malcolm a sympathetic jerk.

Cassavetes infuriated some viewers, and so will Baumbach’s movie. The two artists share a ragtag pseudo-cinema verite style that, mixed with lacerating dialogue, is often painful to watch. Yet the style inspires actors to such live wire performances that turning away is impossible.

Margot at the Wedding in select theaters opens Dec. 21. Read the full review a day earlier in Weekend.