The title is as generic as the humor in You Hurt My Feelings, the latest feature from writer and director Nicole Holofcener. Once again a set of privileged folks teetering between middle and upper class deal with minor slights and aggravations that more or less work out as they (and you) think. It screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival prior to a theatrical release on May 26.
Holofcener has an unerring eye for foibles of the aggrieved privileged: their sense that they are not receiving the respect they deserve, that rivals are somehow gettting better treatment, that the obstacles they face are unfair. “I grew up with this strange feeling that I’m better than anyone else” is a characteristic admission.
So don’t expect narrative or thematic surprises. Instead, you get expertly drawn sketches about the travails of modern life. No one likes where they are, what they’re doing, who they are. A client complains that her interior designer is pushing the wrong sconce, for example. People end up with the wrong earrings, wrong V-neck sweater, wrong coffee. We see a creative writing class from hell, a husband and wife in couples’ therapy from hell.
Holofcener’s characters put up with things until they snap. In Friends with Money, a sexy maid outfit is the turning point for Olivia, Jennifer Anniston’s character. Here, Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) overhears her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) saying that he doesn’t like the novel she wrote.
Beth harbors her little secret until she blurts it out in a moment of pique. That unleashes a flood of other revelations. Her son is still angry about swimming lessons years earlier. Her husband resents his clients, her sister is angry about her job, her students haven’t bothered to read her work. Louis-Dreyfus been perfecting her tone deaf shtick for decades, and nothing here is a stretch for her. It’s like watching a vastly overqualified classical or jazz pianist play “Heart and Soul.”
Contrast Louis-Dreyfus here with her performance in the middling Netflix comedy You People. She had funnier lines there, but her performances was broader, more frantic. Here she’s tamped down, repressed, perfectly in keeping with Holofcener’s tone.
Holfencencer is working well-plowed but still fertile ground. Her script is at its best when it spins off on tangents. In her few moments, the wonderful Jeannie Berlin is brilliant as an elderly mother with possible memory problems. (Berlin has a small but telling bit in The Fablemans.) David Cross and Amber Tamblyn nail their passive-aggressive couple, and the cringes are delightful in Beth’s writing class.
The director knows where her characters shop, what they wear, what kinds of dispiriting jobs they endure. Is that enough? Does You Hurt My Feelings move beyond observation to reach genuine insights? Can a well-crafted, pleasant, undemanding find a receptive audience outside the Sundance universe?
Written & Directed by Nicole Holofcener. Produced by Stefanie Azpiazu, Anthony Bregman, Nicole Holofcener, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Executive Producers: Johnny Holland, Gregory Zuk. Director of Photography: Jeffrey Waldron. Production Designer: Sally Levi. Edited by Alisa Lepselter.
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Owen Teague, Arian Moayed, Jeannie Berlin.
Photo of Julia Louis-Dreyfus courtesy A24.
