Women's troubles

10 April 2012

This is one of those films ? suitable for hot weather ? you can drift into and out of, and thoroughly enjoy the bad time being had by all. Nothing remotely tragic happens: but everyone worries so. It?s about a matriarch named Jane (Brenda Blethyn) who wants a flat tummy and her two grown-up daughters, Michelle the married one (Catherine Keener) who hit her peak as ?Homecoming Queen? in high school and now sits at home and dabbles in arts-and-crafts stuff, and Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) who has a partner and a bit-part in a movie; all are comfortably off, but living in California, body-culture capital of the nation.

I compiled a list of what they all fret about. Tick it off, see what interests you: bust development, flabby arms, yoga (alone or in a group), hairdos, personal trainers, liposuction, loss of elasticity, size eights, aromatherapy, stray dogs, intercourse, natural child birth, dealing with reality, men?

Needless to add, Lovely and Amazing is written and directed (on excellent high-definition video) by a woman, Nicole Holofcener, her second film about womanly uptightness after Walking and Talking; but that doesn?t mean there?s nothing in it for men, or that they necessarily come off worse than the chronically absorbed female characters. Actually the men display a more confident self-image, are less concerned with weight and appearance, and focus on things like jobs, sex and money ? real things, not "image" things.

It?s cruel: "You need a girlfriend," Elizabeth?s boyfriend tells her, "someone you can talk about your upper arms with." It?s masochistic: self-torturing Elizabeth submits her naked body to the scrutiny of her next lover, a narcissistic TV hunk (Kevin Mulroney), and chillingly invites him to "critique" her strengths and weaknesses.

It?s brutal: Michelle with husband problems (he?s staying out later and later) snaps: "I don?t know why he married me", and gets the put-down reply: "You were pregnant." You can forgive a film much for such moments. Not that there?s much to forgive in a shrewd and continually enjoyable social comedy, tabulating the anxious agenda of female-ness, rather than the usual gender challenges of feminism, and playing light-heartedly but illuminatingly with the ultimate unimportance of things that make up so much of women?s daily insecurities.

Sex, actually, isn?t foregrounded, though there?s a Graduate-type sub-plot, underdeveloped but still piquant, when Michelle impulsively goes looking for "real" work ? with a horny 16-year-old schoolkid (Jake Gyllenhaal) running his stepfather?s One-Hour Photoprint shop.

"You?re like my mom," he says, instantly hiring her. I should have added one more thing to the worry-list: statutory rape. Mrs Robinson, maybe, had a narrow escape.

Lovely & Amazing
Cert: cert15

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