Is all truth worth telling? A fortiori within the couple? This question, asked for a long time but devoid of a simple answer to date, is at the heart of Nicole Holofcener’s film You Hurt my Feelings. Cantor of characters who have the art of complicating their lives in a way that is all the more funny and touching because it always rings true, the director of Walking and Talking And Friends with Money offers one of his best dramatic comedies.
In this film dubbed at the Sundance festival, Nicole Holofcener once again demonstrates her infallible comic sense. The filmmaker finds Julia Louis-Dreyfus after their fabulous Enough Said. The star of Seinfeld and of Veep is more than perfect again, this time as Beth, an author struggling to finish her first novel after well-received but poorly sold memoirs.
At least Beth can count on the unfailing encouragement of Don, her psychologist husband, who enthusiastically reads each new version that she submits to him.
This facade of marital comfort can only crack, of course. The first crack occurs by chance, when Beth overhears a conversation where Don admits to not liking the famous novel, version after version.
Beth takes the hit and experiences the moment as a huge betrayal (the movie has a ton of hilarious scenes, but this one isn’t one). If Don lied to her like that repeatedly, was he lying to her about something else? Will she ever be able to trust him again? If not, what are they doing together?
Although Beth was not happy when she was sure that her spouse appreciated her work? Therefore, didn’t Don “do well” to lie to him, or finally, not to tell him the truth?
With her usual mix of frankness, acuity, humor above all, but also tenderness, Nicole Holofcener explores these questions and their nuances, while inviting us to do the same.
tell the truth or lie
The exercise is all the more irresistible as the screenwriter and director has imagined different variations of denials and dissimulations for her characters. Besides, it should be noted that Don is also shaken by a comment he was not supposed to hear.
Indeed, after a consultation by videoconference, his patient mutters when leaving the application: “Good God, what an idiot…”
A whole gallery of secondary characters gravitates around the spouses, each juggling with their own version of the dilemma “to tell the truth or to lie”. For example, Beth and Don’s son blames his mother for encouraging him too much as a child; of having exaggerated the extent of his skills and therefore condemned to mediocrity.
Did Beth actually do that? If so, did she harm her son’s development, or did she, on the contrary, help him by instilling in him self-confidence? But when this self-confidence crumbles a few years later, what is it worth?
It will be understood that many questions lead to more uncertainty. The beauty of the film is that Nicole Holofcener does not claim to know the answers to these existential questions. And even if she knew them, would it Really do us a favor than to give them to us? This is another wonderfully unsolvable question.