"Lovely & Amazing" (2002)

Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely & Amazing is deceptively frivolous and lightweight. Holofcener isn’t concerned with traditional storytelling. There’s drama and there are moments played for laughs, but Holofcener often underplays a fair amount of what takes place. The low-key nature is in service of a story that feels true to life. The film looks at the lives of a family of four women, matriarch Jane (Brenda Blethyn), her two biological thirty-something daughters Michelle (Katherine Keener) and Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), and her recently adopted eight year old African American daughter Annie. Michelle and Elizabeth deal with distant, inattentive partners. Elizabeth is an unsuccessful actress who lacks the confidence to make it big, while Michelle takes a job as a one hour photo job to get her husband off her back about her failing career/hobby as an artist. Meanwhile, Jane gets liposuction to take away what she sees as excess fat and tries hopelessly to flirt with her doctor, and Annie confronts issues of her racial identity and body image, complicated by Jane’s mixed messages about ethnic pride and self-image. Holofcener is interested in the lives of her women: their relationships, their work, their sense of self-worth. She isn’t afraid to have her characters come off as vicious, petty or lacking in self-awareness – or, by the same token, having too much self-awareness. The film is perceptive, observing the, often neurotic, behavior of these characters. In its best moments, especially its infamous, incisive nude scene, Holofcener places these women within the context of larger social and cultural forces. These women are as much products of gender norms as the screwed up family that’s, for better and for worse, bred them. 

Grade: B+