You will sometimes meet a good person, every now and again. Yeah, yeah, there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, whatever — but there are definitely individuals who make you feel more comfortable around them. You Hurt My Feelings has people that you’ll love to be around; they are the ones who are ‘good’ without making one feel like a ‘bad’ person at all. The characters have that rare combination of realistic and relatable with genuine warmth, lived-in self-awareness, and soft humor. If only this movie could last forever so as to be in their orbit.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus leads an amazing ensemble cast that perfectly embodies the kind but insecure group of characters. You Hurt My Feelings mainly focuses on two couples facing professional doubts which begin affecting their personal lives.
Mark (Arian Moayed) is an actor fighting for his life through rejections and thinking he’s not good enough, while his wife Sarah (Michaela Watkins) is an interior designer unable to please her client. Sarah’s sister Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is trying to write a book her publishing company doesn’t want; Don (Tobias Menzies), her husband is becoming convinced that he isn’t helping anyone by being a therapist.
The result is a quiet comedy of manners which makes small existential queries select some mental scabs until they really hurt. What if you aren’t talented at what you do? What if people are pretending to like your work more than they actually do? What if the thing you’re passionate about and create is disliked by the most important people in your life because they don’t want to wound your feelings by telling the truth? These seemingly petty questions spiral outward into a perfect tapestry of complex emotions, witty humor meaningful realizations and beautifully human moments in You Hurt My Feelings, one of the best films of the year.
Beth wrote a largely successful memoir (though she can’t help but think it should’ve done better), and now she’s writing a work of fiction. The book still, however, won’t proceed after nearly dozens of drafts by her publisher; although her husband loves and supports it. She stares at the pile of papers, wondering, ‘Does this make any sense at all? How do I ever know?’ Half the time she lies to them about how interesting their work is in order to encourage and support them and probably does the same to her own husband.
One day Beth and Sarah come across their husbands in a New York City shop and decide to surprise them. Before getting too close to see but close enough to hear, Beth is startled to hear her name come up; Don is going on about how much he dislikes Beth’s new novel, and how impossible it feels to actually tell her the truth. For some reason that not very much sickens me she backs away as though something broke off from one of her tiny slivers of reality.
In the meantime, Beth becomes skeptical of everything Don says. This conversation between Sarah and Mark is narrated to us as occurring, leading to her asking him not to say anything about it. Everybody in their small group, however, is left with questions concerning the degree of trust that should be accorded each other. Even white lies can shatter a relationship into pieces, especially if they concern somebody’s career, art or passion.
Another intimate relationship is explored in You Hurt My Feelings — therapy. David Cross and Amber Tamblyn are a married couple who seem worse at the end than they did at the beginning when that was happening. One patient thinks he heard another one insulting him. He has someone else quitting on him after being with him for so long. Now Don begins doubting his own career.
All this unfolds organically and naturally without any contrived efforts largely absent from most comedies. Comedy films often feel like squalls, but You Hurt My Feelings comes in flurries. It’s never heavy-handed, dumb, loud or melodramatic.” There’s an extreme lived-inness to it though tiny but which contains countless worlds within such minuteness.
And that’s what makes Nicole Holofcener brilliant; she directed this little gem. Instead of telling deep psychological truths about our lives from those mundane experiences Nicole seems to do just the opposite- make whole movies out of them! And still bring forth mountains of moral and psychological insights as well as meaning from them.She probably could have taken several other routes such as: 1) money 2) divorce 3) growing up (or perhaps not) 4) approval.
These issues are dwarfed in comparison to grandiose themes most films aim for yet nothing beats watching her develop and unravel them for meaning. In many ways she represents an Eric Rohmer of today’s generation and it is nice having her around with You Hurt My Feelings. We do miss her muse, Catherine Keener though it looks like Julia Louis-Dreyfus may become her next regular collaborator. Despite the fact that they made an endearing work a decade ago in Enough Said, which was heartfelt and funny at the same time; their performances are more refined now.
Certainly, she is one of the fastest-rising comedic actresses but she has emotional depth that goes unnoticed by those who only laugh when they see what she can do to develop a character. She is in many respects a comic Meryl Streep. It’s ridiculous to think that someone who played Elaine Benes on Seinfeld also played Selina Meyer on Veep and Beth in You Hurt My Feelings! Even as she is being absorbed into Marvels Cinematic Universe over the past few years, I feel that she still belongs to Holofcener-verse where her finest cinematic work comes from. She is just perfect as a generally happy woman having a momentary midlife crisis.
Don or Tobias Menzies shines effortlessly and their love seems realer than any other portrayal of middle aged love until today. Arian Moayed delivered insecurity beyond measure here. The two men who take the leads have done really well making these characters seem believable while exhibiting humor and warmth in them.
Michaela Watkins may be the most renowned of all comedy actresses, while Louis-Dreyfus is arguably the least recognized of them. In every single thing she’s done—especially the little-known but mind-blowing Hulu series Casual—she carries herself with a maturity, intellectuality, and attraction that can only come with age. If the world were right, she would sell out stadiums performing a one-woman show in which she reads from phone books. She plays Beth’s sister, Sarah very well and brings it as probably the film’s most together person. Sarah has gone beyond what other people are thinking about in order to become an assuring presence instead. The others actually want lies rather than truths.
She doesn’t give a damn though because Sarah is that comfortable in her own skin.
All actors are outstanding due to their amazing harmony with an ever first-class director who still manages to make great films after many years in this industry. They have made truly good and realistic characters for a really good and realistic movie. Sometimes you meet such movies among billions of them. Eventually, You Hurt My Feelings is smarter, sweeter and just better than almost any other comedy produced this year; not even joking at all
Watch free movies on Fmovies
