directed by Nicole Holofcener
starring Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer and Brenda Blethyn
2001
Going into it with considerable optimism considering my general enjoyment of Holofcener's Friends With Money, I came out entirely disappointed. While the screenplay offers plenty of good moments for its strong female cast, it is as a whole contrived and confused about what it's attempting to portray. The picture follows three daughters (two grown white women and an adopted black pre-adolescent) as they cope with different insecurities, a trait apparently inherited from their mother, who spends most of the film in a hospital due to plastic surgery.
If Lars von Trier has to hear a lot of shit for the humiliations he puts his heroines through, it'd be unfair not to put Holofcener under the same examination. Whereas von Trier creates his female characters as sympathetic, if only out of naivety , Holofcener's characters are hard to connect with because they are either obnoxious, ignorant, or contrived. I liked all of the women in Friends With Money, despite their flaws, but even the best actress here don't come out unscathed. When an actress as witty as Catherine Keener becomes (unintentionally) downright detestable, something's wrong. She's a brat in a woman's body, and offers no connective entrance to the viewer. While Emily Mortimer's improved in recent years (Lars and the Real Girl especially), her performance here is cold. Brenda Blethyn is sporadically excellent but disappears in the second half. No doubt it could be said that we are not meant to like all imperfect characters (see: Buffalo '66), but the film hinges on it, as there are many emotional cues throughout.
While this indie women's drama is better than similar standard fare, it's full of clever moments and short on direction, both narratively and visually. I laughed more than a couple times, especially because of some of Keener's one liners, but by the last half hour, I'd lost both interest and any emotional link to the characters.
5.5
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