Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in a scene from "Margot at the Wedding".

Noah Baumbach has finally fulfilled a goal that could conceivably be said was 25 years in the achieving: writing a script for his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh. She played a 15-year-old who becomes pregnant and has an abortion in the otherwise funny "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," released in 1982. Her portrayal disturbed the 13-year old Brooklyn boy and he could never quite get it out of his mind.

Flash forward to 1997 when the director and screenwriter son of novelist Jonathan Baumbach and film critic Georgia Brown is coming off the release of his second feature. Baumbach and Leigh - daughter of "Combat" TV star Vic Morrow and screenwriter Barbara Turner - are introduced. Cue the romantic music, and in the ensuing scenes they fall in love. Now, two years after their marriage comes "Margot at the Wedding," which Baumbach also directed. The movie, which goes from an exclusive engagement in New York to a national release this Friday, was filmed in the Hamptons. Baumbach wrote the part of Pauline specifically with Leigh in mind, and then he surrounded her with an A-level cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, and John Turturro.

"I thought of Jennifer right from the beginning, but the problem was I didn't have a beginning," said Baumbach. "Nothing was clicking after my last film. Then I had this image of a mother and son riding on a train. I didn't know yet who this mother and son were and I didn't know where they were going, but I knew I wanted to write about it."

The characters turned out to be Margot and her son, but Baumbach didn't see his wife in the role. But then, he said, once he figured out that they were going to a wedding, the character of Pauline was born, his wife would play her, and he was "delving into one of the most mystery-laden and difficult to nail of all relationships – that between adult sisters, especially those who share a tumultuous family history."

An actor might cringe at playing a character in a Baumbach movie after "The Squid and the Whale," which came out in 2005. The two leads, Jeff Daniels (who was robbed of an Oscar nomination) and Laura Linney were not especially sympathetic people. He was a famous writer whose career was on the skids and she was an aspiring writer, and both are so self-involved that during their divorce they don't recognize the collateral damage to their two children. It was a semi-autobiographical family tale and no one really emerges from it unscathed.

"Margot at the Wedding" is also a story of family strife. At the very least it gives Leigh an opportunity to mix comedy with drama, which Baumbach said was a relief for his wife who has most often been associated with serious and seriously distressed characters in such pictures as "Single White Female," "Dolores Claiborne," and "Last Exit to Brooklyn."

The Margot of the title (Kidman) is an author. Pauline is a free-spirited single mother who invites her older sister and her adolescent son to visit her in the country to meet Malcolm, the man she is going to marry, played by Jack Black. Margot is thinking of leaving her husband and, it turns out, she thinks that Malcolm, described as an "unemployed blowhard," is exactly the wrong man for her sister to marry. The country place is the setting for both humorous and serious family dynamics.

It is also where East End audiences will glimpse some familiar surroundings. When Baumbach was writing the script he didn't have the Hamptons specifically in mind, but the area ended up suiting his needs. "Margot at the Wedding" was shot in April, May, and June of 2006 in East Quogue and Hampton Bays and on Shelter Island (with a few scenes lensed on City Island in the Bronx).

Especially useful in the eastern Long Island setting, Baumbach pointed out, was its unique spring sunlight. Harris Savides, the cinematographer of "Margot at the Wedding," used old lenses and shot many of the scenes in natural light to get a look that has hints of foreboding as the family dynamics become more intense.

"I never had one particular place in mind as I was writing it," Baumbach said. "It was a kind of collage of different places I've been during the course of my life – basically, an island somewhere on the Northeast coast."

Noah Baumbach behind the lens.

Eventually, thanks to his location people, the south shore of the East End and Shelter Island fit the vision. According to Baumbach, "I think the film looks the most like what I initially saw in my head of any film I've made. We had a lot of long discussions about the look of the film, about the look of old family photographs, and the kind of real life feeling I wanted. While the entire film is shot hand-held, we kept the camera as still as possible, which gives it just a little of that human touch."

It will be interesting to see when "Margot at the Wedding" opens nationally on Friday how the critics will receive it. Thus far, Baumbach has not missed a step and has enjoyed a trajectory similar to that of the director Wes Anderson, with whom he wrote the screenplay for "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou" and an upcoming animated version of Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

His debut film as both writer and director was "Kicking and Screaming," in 1995, about a group of college graduates who were trying to postpone adulthood for as long as possible. Two years later "Mr. Jealousy" was released, and as with the first film Baumbach was lauded by critics for creating material that mirrored the real lives of his generation - which, of course, is an almost impossible burden to bear. (Curiously, he also wrote and directed "Highball" in 1997 using two fake names).

Unfortunately, the regard for "Mr. Jealousy" was not shared by audiences, and it took Baumbach eight years to write and, most important, find the financing for "The Squid and the Whale," during which time he wrote essays for The New Yorker. But when it came out in 2005, "Squid" was a breakthrough commercially as well as critically. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and now, at 38, he is considered a "bankable" director.

But last month critics derailed Anderson's career a bit with their lukewarm reaction to "The Darjeeling Limited." In a way, Baumbach is staking his career on the emotional interplay and acting chops of his wife and Nicole Kidman who, though she seems to do 30 movies a year, has not had a hit since winning the Best Actress Oscar for "The Hours" in 2002. Those familiar with Baumbach's work know to at least expect the unexpected, such as a scene in "Margot at the Wedding" when the two sisters burst into hysterical laughter when recalling that their younger sister was raped by a horse trainer.

By the way, for any of you Francophiles out there, "Margot at the Wedding" is an homage to the French New Wave cinema that included directors Jean Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Eric Rohmer, and Francois Truffaut. For a time, Baumbach intended his film to be titled "Nicole at the Beach" after Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach," but then Kidman was signed to play the lead so he simply named his wife's character Pauline.

Baumbach has already completed a script that he hopes to direct next year. Yet he will continue to work on projects. He is now writing a screen adaptation of the Claire Messud novel "The Emperor's Children," which is to be directed by Ron Howard.

For now, though, "Margot at the Wedding" and its reception, so to speak, commands Baumbach's attention. "I don't care if people see it as a comedy or a drama or both," he said, "so long as they participate in the story."