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Lovely & Amazing
**1/2
Cinema Releases - August 9, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
91 minutes. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. Starring Catherine
Keener, Brenda Blethyn, Emily Mortimer, Raven Goodwin, Aunjanue Ellis, Clark
Gregg, Jake Gyllenhall, James LeGros, Michael Nuri, Dermot
Mulroney.
There is a scene in "Lovely &
Amazing" in which a woman gets out of her bed, stands in front of
it naked, and asks her lover to describe her body. She wants to know her
strengths and flaws in detail; what works, what doesn't, what stands out
and what fades into the background, and the manner in which it fits together
as a package.
The request is a strange one. It makes sense for
this movie, though, which embraces a family of women by photographing them
with tenderness even as their imperfections pour from the screen. These are
persistent, annoying, concerning imperfections, rather than just cute little
human flaws that we're supposed to identify with and shrug off. A movie with
these characters could have become as unlikeable as "Love & Sex". What
makes "Lovely & Amazing" interesting is how it seems to acknowledge that
its characters are often frustrating, and tells us that it accepts them
anyway.
Blenda Blethyn plays Jane, the matriarch of her
California family; she's a lonely middle-class woman with a fondness for
nice pillow arrangements, busy taking care of an adopted black girl now that
her biological daughters have flown the nest. Blethyn smothers her beloved
youngster, a kid who does indeed love her back, but she still suffers from
the low self-esteem that age ends up handing to most of us, and she is intent
on getting liposuction done on her stomach. She talks about it whimsically
and matter-of-factly, but driving it all is that underlying desire to be
younger and less of a mess; it's the light comic version of the old woman
Ellen Burstyn played in "Requiem for a Dream".
The adopted daughter is Annie (Raven Goodwin),
who is overweight from snacking, talks in the tones of a spoiled child and
freaks out her carers by pretending to be lifeless while in the swimming
pool. She seems odd, but I shared some of her traits as a pre-teen, and looking
back I see less weirdness than enjoyment of food, being a product of surroundings
and trying to find a way to express and entertain myself with unconventionality.
Floating in the pool and holding your breath might look crazy to adults,
but when you're a kid, it's about the closest thing to exercising your creative
muscles that you have any opportunity to indulge in.
Emily Mortimer is Elizabeth, a thin, elegantly
pretty and neurotic actress who thinks that her career achievements aren't
coming fast enough, that her boyfriend (James LeGros) doesn't appreciate
her enough, that nobody understands her love of animals. Seeing as she's
with a man who answers questions with straight answers, she'd get along a
lot better if she didn't keep asking those rhetorical women's questions for
which no answers are satisfactory.
The other sister is Michelle, who, like most
characters played by Catherine Keener, is curt and self-involved. She's bored
of her husband, and tells him so in catty little asides rather than an honest
confrontation. Her kid asks to be read a story in the bedroom, while she
stays on the couch, encouraging him to come join her and watch cartoons.
She's told to go out and get a job rather than making arts and crafts round
the house and making half-hearted attempts to sell them... and those who
tell her that have a point.
All Michelle really wants, I suppose, is a little
interest or excitement away from routine, but eventually she does go out
to get a job, in a scene that leads up to one of the movie's best laughs.
"You're hot," says the kid at the photo shop. "A minute ago you said I looked
like your mom," replies Michelle. The kid: "My mom's nice."
Much of the most enjoyable humour comes from
one-liners rather than the characters, and that's a pity, but the movie
nonetheless manages to revolve between being annoying, endearing, funny,
frivolous and dramatic. It's a challenging experience, I guess, because I'm
not sure what to make of it. The performances are skilled and honest, and
the writer-director, Nicole Holofcener, creates an effective showcase for
them. The film spends time with its characters over a couple of weeks, and
does little else in the way of story, and by the end of it all I sort of
loved the people onscreen, even though I could not stand them. Perhaps "Lovely
& Amazing" should be seen as a conversation starter. It's not an easy
one to review.
The movie might have edged its way into a three-star
rating if it had not been filmed on digital video, which looks clean and
professional, but also flat and impersonal. This is not one of those expert
video jobs like "24 Hour Party People" or "Sex and Lucia", and it lacks the
organic humanity that the grain and chemicals of traditional celluloid
photography might have provided. The movie would have a whole different aura
if it looked bright, natural and forgiving rather than synthetic and
dulled.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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