Summary
A grounded, and often laugh-out-loud funny, look at late middle age, relationships, and this business of being human.
Since her 1996 feature debut Walking and Talking, filmmaker Nicole Holofcener has carved out a very specific niche. It’s a unique corner, one that uses an atypical structure and tends to focus on the problems of the middle class. YOU HURT MY FEELINGS, her seventh feature as writer/director, doesn’t aim to change that. Which is just fine and dandy.
Holofcener introduces us to married couple Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a novelist and writing teacher, and psychiatrist Don (Tobias Menzies). They are ostensibly a perfect couple, to the point that their son Elliot (Owen Teague) gets vaguely cringey whenever they start sharing an ice cream. Yet when Beth accidentally overhears Don’s real opinion about her latest book, she gives Don the silent treatment.
Beth turns to her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) for advice, but she is having her own issues. Her actor husband Mark (Arian Moayed) is experiencing a crisis after losing a job. Meanwhile, Don himself feels like he isn’t living up to the expectations of his clients.
There’s not a lot to YOU HURT MY FEELINGS. It’s a relationship comedy about the little white lies we tell the people who are important to us in the name of being supportive. What separates this from the chaff is Holofcener’s sharp writing and the impeccable comedic chops of the leads. Perhaps only Louis-Dreyfus and Watkins could ponder “Isn’t a weird thing when your doctor dies?” with a straight face. Suffice it to say, audience faces will not be as placid.
The relationship between Sarah, Beth, and their mildly vague mother Georgia (Jeannie Berlin) is divine. Georgia is introduced insisting that she’s never seen Beetlejuice on stage, despite having a program in her apartment. Beth and Georgia later argue over the latter’s insistence that Beth put potato salad in tinfoil.
In fact, the whole cast is putting in their A-game on this one. A key scene later in the film see the four principal actors all deciding to quit their professions In supporting roles, David Cross and Amber Tamblyn appear as a couple who just can’t stop arguing in Don’s office. It’s never anything less than uncomfortable, but it’s always funny.
Late in the film, Beth refers to it as her “little narcissistic world” and for some audience members, that may be the barrier. It’s a closed world inhabited solely by this group of characters. Yet for the rest of us, there’s a universality to their little problems and hurt feelings.
2023 | USA | DIRECTOR: Nicole Holofcener | WRITER: Nicole Holofcener | CAST: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Arian Moayed, Owen Teague, Jeannie Berlin, David Cross, Amber Tambyln | DISTRIBUTOR: Roadshow Films (AUS), A24 (US) | RUNNING TIME: 93 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 15 June 2023 (AUS), 26 May 2023 (USA)
