Writer and Director: Nicole Holofcener
Telling little white lies which result in your getting into trouble seems a promising-enough premise for a comedy drama. In You Hurt My Feelings, however, these white lies range from ‘Should you tell your writer wife you love her latest book when you don’t?’ down to ‘Should you react joyfully when he always gets you the same anniversary present?’ In other words, however pressing such ethical issues for a wealthy white couple in Manhattan, it’s not likely to seem that chucklesome to most of us.
The theme is clearly signalled from the get-go, when we see therapist Don (Tobias Menzies) clearly bored by the rowing couple in front of him. They’re having trouble being honest with one another! Then we see Don’s writer wife, gushing about the efforts of her creative writing students. She’s telling White Lies! Or perhaps she isn’t. It’s hard to tell with Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s ever-eager-to-please Beth.
Anyway, the central idea is that Beth, having authored a reasonably successful memoir, is trying to get her first novel published. To her horror, her agent turns it down, truthfully pointing out that the competition out there is fierce now there are all those diverse voices. There’s a good comic moment when Beth tells her elderly mother that her memoir would have been a best seller if her father had done more than abuse her verbally. Now, we feel, the film might go somewhere interesting and explore Beth’s entitled shallowness. But no, Holofcener’s script stays firmly on the surface.
Beth feels her life is falling apart when she accidentally overhears Don tell her brother-in-law, unsuccessful actor Mark, that he’s read Beth’s manuscript and doesn’t rate it. After this searing discovery, others come thick and fast. Their twenty-something son and would-be writer, Elliot, currently manager of a cannabis store, finds his girlfriend doesn’t like him any more! Actor Mark loses his job! Beth’s sister, interior decorator Sarah, can’t source a light fitting her Japanese client likes! Gosh, how these guys suffer. And then, to top it all, Don realises he’s not a very good therapist. We’ve seen him muddling up his clients’ life stories but it’s only when the rowing couple demand a refund for two years of fruitless therapy that he gets the point. He’s not in some sort of cognitive decline, however – just not a very good therapist.
It’s not much of a spoiler to say that when we meet the characters one year on, they’ve all learnt that Honesty is the Best Policy. Quite how Beth and Don can still afford their apartment in West 73rd Street – or is that just his office? – now Don no longer works is not explained. Ah, but (real spoiler alert!) Beth has published her novel! That explains it. We all know the mighty sums publishers pay out as advances to first-time novelists. And guess what happens to unsuccessful actor Mark and unpublished novelist Elliot? Go on. It’s not hard. In fact the end of the film is so spectacularly limp, it may actually induce a genuine laugh.
You Hurt My Feelings streaming on Prime Video 8th August.
