Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Beth in You Hurt My Feelings (2023)
- Reviewed from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
At the centre of writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings is the mellowed marriage between Manhattanites Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a writer and teacher plugging away at a new novel, and Don (Tobias Menzies), a shrink whose practice has grown stale. The couple lap at the same ice-cream cone, to the horror of their adult son (Owen Teague), and feign excitement over impersonal anniversary gifts. But when Beth overhears Don voicing his real, unenthusiastic opinions about her latest book, she experiences a crisis of faith in the marriage that has long been her rock.
It’s a source of surprise to Don that, in a world falling to pieces, it’s his white lie that has somehow upended Beth’s balance. Beth’s defence – that her work, family and feelings are her world, and as much a valid cause of distress as anything happening outside of her bubble – is the closest Holofcener comes to articulating anything like an argument in the film. But this idea is trapped in an only fitfully funny comedy that struggles to deepen its characters beyond their good intentions.
Though it is a delight to witness Louis-Dreyfus ping-ponging off comedians as razor-sharp as Michaela Watkins, who plays Beth’s interior-decorator sister, and the great Jeannie Berlin, who plays their impossible mother, You Hurt My Feelings is padded with dithering tertiary characters and trivial squabbles; there is only so much prattling about wall lamps and grudging charity one can stand. Holofcener’s films have never been immune to dubious subplots; the bizarre stalemate between Toni Collette and her Latina housekeeper in Enough Said (2013) comes to mind. But in several scenes here – Beth’s writing workshops, Don’s therapy sessions – Holofcener’s approach threatens to calcify into shtick.
What keeps You Hurt My Feelings afloat is the durable connection between Menzies and Louis-Dreyfus, who convince as a later-in-life couple disinclined to question their co-dependency. Though certain reaction shots and intonations might feel familiar from her TV work, Louis-Dreyfus pushes herself as a performer during Beth’s breakdowns, evincing raw turmoil in ways we have seldom seen her attempt. But no matter the strength of her emoting, the drama’s instigating conflict ends up feeling meagre, its resolution featherlight. The conflict between the pair is not inherently low-stakes, but the fallout from Don’s remarks never holds any danger of real division, any threat of either partner reconsidering their views of one another. Holofcener is not interested in investigating how much honesty our most intimate relationships can sustain. Instead, she returns the couple back to their cushy middle-class normalcy – a smidgen more honest, perhaps, but with little distance travelled.