It’s always a time to celebrate when we get a new Nicole Holofcener movie, and that’s especially true of her latest starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. You Hurt My Feelings, which premiered Sunday night at Sundance, is the couple’s second collaboration, while 2013’s Enough Said, starring the late James Gandolfini, was their first. This film and other Holofcener writers and directors like Friends with Money, Lovely & Amazing and perhaps my favorite Please Give (not to mention the wonderful Can You Ever Forgive Me? she helped write) focused on the whimsical nature of our relationships to others in our lives. Holofcener just always had a knack for getting things straight, often with a witty, wise, and honest touch.
This film is one of their best – with themes of trust, honesty, truth and lies taking center stage. Louis-Dreyfus plays happily married Beth, a memoir writer about to finish her first novel. She volunteers with her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) to help homeless people and teaches a small creative writing class. She seems to have a great relationship with her husband Don (Tobias Menzies from The Crown and Game of Thrones), a therapist who is also getting a bit vain in his middle age and wondering if he should get cosmetic surgery around his eyes ( “I used to be so hot,” he laments). They are the parents of 23-year-old Eliot (Owen Teague), who are so close and trusting that he can’t believe they’re still sharing each other’s food, even ice cream cones. So what could go wrong?
Moving on to Holofcener’s main premise, which takes center stage as Beth overhears Don’s conversation with her brother-in-law, an actor named Mark (Arian Moayed), about his frustration at having to read and comment on draft after draft of her novel, even though he says she does , he doesn’t really like it. This crushes her, but she keeps it to herself until it is revealed that it has rocked their relationship. Holofcener is interested in our honesty with loved ones, the “little lies” we tell that may be necessary to show support and encouragement, but may not reveal the whole truth. Does it matter in otherwise healthy relationships? Holofcener finds plenty of ways to explore it, not just with Beth and Don, but almost every other key character who goes in and out of this very human and character-driven comedy.
Honesty comes into her professions as well, as Beth tries to encourage her students, not when it’s always warranted. Don is also faced with telling the truth head-on with a feuding couple (Amber Tamblyn and David Cross, very funny) who came to him for therapy with no visible results, eventually leading her to demand a refund. There’s also Beth and Sarah’s needy mother, Georgia, played with comedic perfection by Jeannie Berlin in a role that could have been played by her mother, Elaine May. Like mother, like daughter and both visibly brilliant. Teague is also well cast as her son, who works in a cannabis store but is also trying to be a writer, with his parents’ encouragement, but perhaps not always entirely honestly. Watkins and Moayed provide excellent support.
The whole point of all of this is how damaging our own feelings and opinions can be before they hurt those of those closest to us? It’s all presented in an understated but amusing way by a filmmaker whose observations of human foibles and behaviors hit the mark every time. There’s a lot to talk about here in this A24 release that should play very well on the specialty circuit. Louis-Dreyfus has a talent for comedy, as she proved twice again this week, not only here but also in Kenya Barris’ terrific Netflix comedy You People. Menzies wasn’t an obvious choice, but an ideal choice, as it turned out. Together they create a marriage that’s honest enough where it really counts, and honestly, at a Sundance festival packed with films that show much, much darker visions of our relationships with one another, You Hurt My Feelings gives me hope.
Producers are Stefanie Azpiazu, Anthony Bregman, Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus.