Lovely & Amazing

This film is about the daily struggles for happiness of a mother and her 3 daughters.

The story is captivating from the start. The mother, played by Brenda Blethlyn, is insecure and wanted a liposuction. The eldest daughter, played by Catherine Keener, has a painfully distant husband. The middle daughter, played by Emily Mortimer, is a struggling actress with high levels of insecurity. The youngest daughter is an adopted daughter of African heritage, and she is spoilt to bits.

The dysfunction between the family is portrayed very well, due to excellent character developments. I get to understand every character's thoughts and feelings. Catherine Keener and Emily Mortimer act well, and brings the characters to life. There are few films that can make the characters so vivid and alive.

Watchable and inoffensive but hardly likely to arouse intense debate about anything, really. The performances are neat and unshowy, with Catherine Keener reliable as ever as (another) wayward hard-ass, Mulroney playing the roguish fool and Jake Gyllenhaal practising for the role he plays in The Good Girl. But Brenda Blethyn's matriarch isn't given any real depth which has got to go down as a missed opportunity. And since the story is an irrelevance, there aren't enough revelations (in fact, none) amongst the introspective musings and general angst to set this apart from any other female-orientated slice-of-life indie. It all feels a bit like Soderbergh's Full Frontal, only less constipated.

When I first saw Walking and Talking, Nicole Holofcener's previous film, I didn't realize at first what a brilliant piece of work it was. My experience with Lovely and Amazing was exactly the same. It is only later that it becomes clear how expertly the relationships between the characters are illuminated and with what originality she has constructed a story. Lovely and Amazing is an examination of a family of women and their complex relationships with themselves and the men in their lives. The women in Lovely and Amazing are real people. They are frequently horrible to each other and sabotage themselves just like real women. They are also capable, like real women, of moments of intimacy and insight with each other.

I believe Nicole Holofcener is the most talented indie filmmaker out there at the moment. Walking and Talking is one of my all time favorite films, and Lovely and Amazing just confirmed her status in my eyes as an insightful storyteller. Audiences deserve more films that achieve this level of excellence, and I hope Nicole Holofcener has the chance to deliver them.

The thing that makes this movie so - I have to say it - lovely & amazing is what it doesn't do: it doesn't attempt in any shape or form to be commercial, it doesn't compromise its integrity or the integrity of its characters in any way, and it doesn't try to be cute or clever or witty or deep. It simply invites us into the characters' lives and lets us share them for a couple of hours. No judgment, no big overblown speeches, no hystrionics. No car crashes, no dead bodies, no funerals. No artifice, no heavy-handedness, no contrivances.

Nicole Holofcener achieved the same effect in Walking & Talking, which had the same 'effortless' feel to it, and the always-wonderful Catherine Keener is in both, as well. The cast also includes Brenda Blethyn, Emily Mortimer and Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko himself!) and everyone is superb, creating beautifully nuanced and subtle characterizations that ring entirely true.

I trust Holofcener (even though I can't pronounce her name yet) - she doesn't seem like she's going to sell out and make anything remotely commercial anytime in the future, her vision is far too pure for that, which makes her lovely & amazing in my book.

Holofcener has got an eye for telling stories about modern-day relationships, particularly the relationships women have with others. Her films are insightful and they even depict an uncomfortable truth about human behaviour and how mean and even cruel people can be without even realizing. 'Lovely and Amazing' focuses on the family Marks, a family of women that include Jane mother of three eager to get liposuction to lose weight, Michelle, the obnoxious, self-involved mean older daughter who has a dysfunctional relationship with everyone, the insecure younger daughter Elizabeth who is a struggling actress and the youngest is ten-year-old Annie, who wants to look like her mother and sisters. These dysfunctional sisters, though never overtly hostile or aggressive with each other, they merely seem to just get along. However, Jane's hospitalization brings them close to each other but in an unexpected way.

Director Holofcener very subtly portrays the tenderness of each character and the intimacy in their relationships. There are no sugarcoated melodramatic spoonfeeding for the viewer. The relationship with the mother is also a key element and the viewer witnesses that each sister has a different bond with her.

I only thought that the portrayal of the men was a bit one sided as all of them are shown to be inconsiderate jerks. However, this is clearly a film about women and Brenda Blethyn, Catherine Keener and Emily Mortimer do a wonderful job. Raven Goodwin does a brilliant job too. Her Annie is perhaps the sum of the personality of her sisters. Of the supporting cast, Aunjanue Ellis and Clark Gregg do a fine job.

In terms of execution, thankfully there's nothing too flashy. The lighting, cinematography, score and editing are fine. Product placement is quite obvious in places. 'Lovely & Amazing' is an insightful look at the relationship between modern day women. The stars of this film are Nicole Holofcener and her actresses.