Nicole Holofcener’s latest film certainly contains moments of hilarity, but it is otherwise a middling melodrama about self-absorbed New Yorkers.
★★✰✰✰
A new comedic drama helmed by Nicole Holofcener, You Hurt My Feelings follows a couple who face trust issues. The lie in question is from Don (Tobias Menzies) to Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), regarding the quality of her new book. After two years of praising every draft, Beth discovers that Don has been lying and that he actually dislikes the book—a lot. This dishonesty leads to trust issues and marital problems for the two as personal crises bleed into one another.
The opening scene of You Hurt My Feelings is almost instantly laugh-out-loud funny. Therapist Don is in a couple’s therapy appointment, with a very clearly dysfunctional pair arguing before him. The brutal honesty of the dialogue, its dry delivery and the contained performances in this sequence from Menzies and David Cross suggest that a deeply funny film is beginning.
Soon after, however, this quality is lost. The performances are notably not to blame for this, as across the board the ensemble cast is great. The aforementioned Tobias Menzies stands out in particular, with his stoic line delivery highlighting a man in the midst of a personal crisis, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus also gives a good show. She is able to transition well between being sensitive and insecure and delivering comedic lines with panache, effectively balancing the film’s dramatic and comedic elements.
The problem is more so with the script and the direction. Visually, the film is extremely bland. Of course the visual style isn’t the primary focus of the film, but there is no effort put into making scenes look interesting. It is shot in a seriously dull fashion, and the occasionally poor editing doesn’t help.
The script is sometimes able to pick up the slack of the visuals, but not always. The characters are distinctive and feel alive, but they are tediously frustrating. Did the world need another film about middle to upper class New Yorkers struggling with a self-absorbed anxiety? Definitely not, and these characters are particularly irritating because of their vanity. There is so little awareness of privilege, and that doesn’t appear to be seen as problematic by the characters or the film itself. Even Eliot (Beth & Don’s son) is used as comedic relief when bringing up his more legitimate problems with the way he was brought up.
The characters are effectively humanised but are still unlikeable because of their incessant complains about first-world issues. Those issues include Beth’s memoir not selling as much as expected, or Don mixing up two cases at work. Beth’s sister, Sarah, features in an extended storyline about how she is unable to find a suitable light fixture for a client, for an even worse example. The characters are individual and fleshed-out, but this only serves their frustrating characteristics. Rather than challenging the characters, there is a shrugging cynicism to Holofcener’s script which suggests that these characters simply are what they are. There is a suggestion that nothing more should be expected of them. These frustrations with the characters mean that potentially touching moments fail to evoke much emotion.
Holofcener is known for her quality melodramatic work. She previously directed both Enough Said and Walking and Talking, two highly acclaimed independent dramas. Her credentials as a writer are even more impressive, co-writing the fantastic The Last Duel with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and being Oscar-nominated for her work on Can You Ever Forgive Me? alongside Jeff Whitty. With You Hurt My Feelings, she fails to make the struggles of her middle-class couple relatable. The film does contain amusing sequences and good performances, but the viewer is held at a distance from the characters. Holofcener’s cynicism and ignorance towards her characters’ privilege costs the film dearly; it plays much like a Woody Allen comedy without the laughs.
The Verdict
Nicole Holofcener’s latest has some impressive elements, but is largely a cliched and uninteresting film. It sticks to the rules of most other New York-set independent films, and because of that it fails to be memorable or to stand out.
Words by Reece Beckett
You Hurt My Feelings will become available on Prime Video on the 8th August 2023.
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