The Films of Nicole Holofcener
“Stop for a second and think what it’s like for me! That’s all I want.” — Amelia (Catherine Keener) in Walking and Talking, 1996
Though the acerbic wit of Nicole Holofcener’s films might not always make this apparent, her seven films are acts of deep empathy. But whether it comes as an act of selfless generosity or selfish emotional ransom is an entirely different question. Her latest film, Sundance smash You Hurt My Feelings (now playing in theaters), continues to add depth and dimension to the questions that have fascinated the writer-director since her debut feature over a quarter-century ago.
At first glance, it might be easy to dismiss Holofcener’s work as trifles because of their thematic throughline: white people problems. But unlike (to give just one example) Judd Apatow’s “west of the 405” comedies, Holofcener does not take her subjects’ status as a given. It’s a root of their everyday ails but is not necessarily a “problem” that they must solve. I think something Alyssa Rosenberg wrote for The Washington Post in 2016 is particularly instructive when thinking about how to regard Holofcener’s films:
“It’s absolutely true that Hollywood studios make large numbers of movies about white men and women and expect those characters’ experiences to stand in for audiences’ lives in a way that is rarely true when a movie has a cast that is largely or entirely composed of people of color […] it’s time to start talking about how these films reflect on white people and whiteness, and to stop treating them as a proxy for all human experience.”
In some sense, Holofcener adheres to one of her craft’s most famous dictums: “write what you know.” Her films, oftentimes pulling from autobiographical details and frequently set among her elite bicoastal milieu, feel like dispatches from within a group that possess the wisdom of someone who can observe dispassionately from without. What sets them apart — and what I think leaves them most open to misinterpretation — is that Holofcener resists satirizing rich white people.
Especially in You Hurt My Feelings, it’s clear Holofcener is building in some predictive responses to the bad-faith criticisms that might be leveled against her. When Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ semi-renowned novelist Beth meets with her agent to discuss the next project, she’s politely reminded that she is competing against “new voices” in the market now. During the climactic fight scene when she must finally face her husband, Tobias Menzies’ middling therapist Don, he chastens her by saying, “The whole world’s falling apart and this is what’s consuming you?”
But here’s the thing: these small pseudo-problems can become all-consuming for those who sit perched aloft Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. First-world problems mean the world to those experiencing them. Free of censorious judgment, Holofcener’s approach resists the post-Trump/White Lotus-ified need to see wealthy characters chastened, shamed, or punished simply for being.
You Hurt My Feelings most closely resembles a parable: a short story using fictional humans to remind viewers of how to uphold their values. The film isn’t instructive, and it doesn’t have to be. As a deeper dive into Holofcener’s work shows, she illuminates inner lives influenced by outer circumstances — and that proves its own form of commentary and comedy.
ncG1vNJzZmilkafAqa3LpZinnKSdsq671aKcrGajqq%2B0wMCcomebn6J8sXvIp2SmsV2bsqa4yKeerGWknbJussilpKxln5t6r7XCqKOe