Jeong Park - © Just My Opinion Pictures Inc
A stirring cast of relatable characters—for middle aged folks, anyway—rallies around veteran comic talent Julia Louis-Dreyfus in You Hurt My Feelings, director/writer Nicole Holofcener’s ode to aging, identity and the little white lies we tell our loved ones. Feelings is a smart yet simple tale told well, an homage to writing, really, both in how it portrays Louis-Dreyfus’ sometimes acerbic author, Beth, and in how the film itself bets big and mostly wins on its dialogue and actors.
We join our hero during the creation of her second book, her first take on fiction. Beth’s debut, a memoir built around her verbally abusive father, did OK, we’re repeatedly told. The new one, however, has fallen victim to overthought and way too many drafts. She works as a writing teacher at New York City’s New School, and between her agent’s tepid response to her new work and a classroom full of students who never bothered to read her first, Beth is fragile enough as it is, but then overhears her husband Don, a therapist who fears he’s losing his edge (Game of Thrones’ Tobias Menzies), say he just plain doesn’t like it.
Calamity ensues as Beth reels while wondering how her husband can possibly respect her if he doesn’t respect her work. Meanwhile, her sister (the ever-solid Michaela Watkins) navigates similar waters at home as her would-be actor husband grapples with his own demons surrounding aging, career and so forth. Without ever saying it out loud, Holofcener gracefully points out that terrifying and humiliating moment that eventually comes for folks who live long enough—the world went and got all screwy when we weren’t looking, now it might leave us behind.
Holofcener (Enough Said) excels at dialogue and thematics in Feelings and crafts the sort of small yet painfully pressing interpersonal exchanges that define ourselves and our relationships. Does lying about how much we enjoy our loved ones’ work or creative endeavors express disrespect, or is it more about supporting them when they need it most? We all place little pressures on those around us every single day, but how do those things come out in the long run? Louis-Dreyfus masterfully glides through her character’s foibles and even her pettier moments, but small triumphs of motherhood, spousal life and self-reflection propel her to a greater level of understanding for the people around her even as she hides a competitor’s book beneath her own at the neighborhood book shop, even as she wrestles existentially with her 20-something son (Owen Teague). This one might not light up the box office with millions of adoring fans, but if You Hurt My Feelings is some sort of new beginning for the NYC-based warts-and-all rom-com, it’s a good start.
7
+Louis-Dreyfus; painfully relatable yet funny
-Disjointed at times; hard to feel that bad for the well-to-do
You Hurt My Feelings
Directed by Holofcener
With Louis-Dreyfus, Menzies, Watkins and Teague
Violet Crown, R, 93 min.
