|
Sister girlfriends >>
Lovely & Amazing is a pleasing comedy by MATTHEW HAYS
But to her credit, writer-director Holofcener holds this film together-quite admirably, I would argue. In creating this portrait of a fiftysomething mother (Blethyn) and her three very different daughters, Holofcener has crafted one of those Altman-influenced, unassuming bits of moviemaking, full of quirky yet honest moments (a difficult balance, for sure). In the film’s main narrative through-line, Blethyn has decided to go under the knife for cosmetic surgery, hoping to have 10 pounds sucked out of her system. As it turns out, appearance and age are also thematic through lines in the film; Keener has a marriage that’s on the rocks, and ends up fooling around with a teenager. Emily Mortimer, as another daughter, is a struggling actress trying desperately to make it in a particularly unforgiving business. And in an exceptional performance, Raven Goodwin plays the adopted African-American daughter of Blethyn, who’s left bemoaning the colour of her skin and fretting over her lineage (she was given up for adoption by a crack-addicted mother). Like her first film, Walking and Talking, Lovely & Amazing is buoyed by the perfect cast assembled. Keener is both insightful and hilarious as the out-of-work struggling artist and mother, played in an especially complex tone, as someone who is so neurotically self-indulgent as to not always appear sympathetic. Mortimer is also dead-on as an aspiring thespian. Her audition scene opposite Dermot Mulroney is as funny as it is sad. Throughout
Lovely & Amazing, Holofcener plays the moments in her script up
with intricate style, rather than descending for the easy laughs. It’s
a credit to a developing filmmaker-hopefully we won’t have to
wait another six years for her next feature. : Lovely & Amazing opens Friday, July 19 >> Movie Listings |
There
are moments when filmmaker Nicole Holofcener’s latest feature,
Lovely & Amazing, threatens to go completely over the top. Moments
when it seems like the race-relations theme (Brenda Blethyn has adopted
an eight-year-old African-American girl) might be made too maudlin.
Or when the plot twists involving Catherine Keener’s wacky romantic
fling risk careening of control.