Year of Release: 2001
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Starring: Catherine Keener, Brenda Blethyn, Emily Mortimer, Jake Gyllenhaal, James Le Gros, Dermot Mulroney, Raven Goodwin, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Clark Gregg, Michael Nouri, Lee Garlington, Spencer Garrett
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 4
Watch it on Tubi
Synopsis and Review
After making a name for herself with her feature directorial debut, "Walking and Talking" (which also featured her usual collaborator, Catherine Keener), writer/director Nicole Holofcener tackled a few TV directorial gigs (such as a few episodes of Darren Star's "Sex and the City" show), before releasing "Lovely & Amazing" her sophomore directorial endeavor. The film follows the story of the Marks family, specifically the matriarch Jane, and her three daughters, Michelle and Elizabeth who are adult, and the youngest Annie, still a child, whom she adopted later in life. Jane feels insecure about her looks, and decides to try a liposuction procedure. What is apparently a routine procedure turns out to be something more serious, as complications arise, resulting in a prolonged hospital stay. Michelle, who is married, focuses her time on crafting different art pieces which she then tries to sell to small businesses, most of the times without much success. This puts a strain on her marriage. Her husband in the meantime, while pretending to be supportive of her choices, is having an affair with her friend Donna. She eventually decides to take a job at a one-hour photo lab, working alongside a 17 year old named Jordan, who is smitten with her. Elizabeth is an aspiring actress, currently in a frustrating relationship. She goes for an audition with a sex symbol, and while they have great chemistry, she is not chosen for the part. She gets feedback that she's not sexy enough, which leaves her very insecure about herself. She starts a tryst with the movie star she auditioned with. Annie in the meantime is having a difficult time adjusting to the fact her mom is in the hospital, and that she's so different than her sisters.
I admit that I always leave Nicole Holofcener's films feeling a bit underwhelmed. Not because the reviews over-hyper her films, but because I always have the sensation that the narratives she illustrates are wafer thin and eventually the films just run out of potency. It's not that she doesn't have a point of view, the more blatant issue seems to be the fact that the point of view feels too generic to resonate deeper with the audiences (and myself in particular). Of all her films the one that resonated with me the most was actually "Enough Said" with James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, since it tackled the challenges individuals face with attempting a romantic relationship at a certain age in their lives. "Lovely & Amazing" illustrates the lives and challenges of these women in this family unit, in a context that feels very Los Angeles based, meaning everyone is very privileged, comfortable, and experience life in a way that seems quite sheltered. One can say that you don't watch Nicole Holofcener, or Nancy Myers, or even Woody Allen's films for the depiction of the challenges the working class suffers or the pulsating heartbeat of romance: their universes, though quite different from each other, always exists in this bubble of Los Angeles ennui, HGTV middle age porn, and Manhattan intellectual malaise respectively. Meaning: there's nothing necessarily wrong with "Lovely & Amazing", but it's a film that feels vapid and innocuous, where there isn't a strong point being made, where the narrative just captures the lives of these individuals in this moment in time, and that just has to suffice. These characters, whatever we understand of them, don't experience epiphanies, don't become a better version of themselves, and don't necessarily represent an archetype: they're just slight, living in a world that seems neighboring a TV show (not HBO), and by the time the narrative ends, their storyline and the film itself is instantly forgettable. The cast tries their best, particularly Catherine Keener and Emily Mortimer, and it's nice to know that they both went on to do better and more memorable work with other film makers. There's nothing wrong with this film, but there's nothing necessarily great about it either.
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