While Lena Dunham may get all the write-ups in the Times style section, Nicole Holofcener has quietly been producing insightful and funny studies in femininity since before it was cool. Enough Said, a romantic dramedy starring the great James Gandolfini, is her best yet.
Enough Said is the story of Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a divorcee with a best friend, a decently successful massage practice, and a daughter who is about to go away to college. She has wrapped herself in a cocoon of subtle self-defense mechanisms, which starts to get punctured after she goes to a party with best friend Sarah (Toni Collette) and her husband Will (Ben Falcone). At the party, she meets Albert (James Gandolfini), a large but lovable gentleman who shows interest. She also meets a glamorous poet, Marianne (Catherine Keener), who shows interest in getting a massage.
From that point forward, she begins to develop a relationship with Albert and a friendship with Marianne. She really, really likes Albert"”but when she realizes that Marianne is his ex-wife, she starts to let Marianne's complaints corrupt her relationship with Albert.
Ultimately, Enough Said is about love and its opposite. Not hate"”hate is the dark side of the same coin as love. It involves giving, taking a definite stand towards something other than yourself. You can hate something because it threatens something you love. No, the opposite of love is selfishness. It is being too concerned with the safety of the self to give your heart to someone else, to only interpret the sum total of their being through the lens of a narcissist's cost/benefit analysis.
That's Eva's (surely the similarity to Eve, selfish star of the Hebrew creation story, was not an accident) problem. And her attitude takes us to the next key insight of Enough Said: how our underlying attitude determines how we react to little things in our partners. The fact that Albert can't whisper, that he separates the guacamole from the onions, that he is overweight and doesn't own a bedside table"”all of those become splinters in Eva's soul, that grate on her every time they happen and ultimately threaten the relationship.
Holofcener cleverly draws a parallel between the romantic relationship between Eva and Albert and the parental relationship between Eva and her daughter, Ellen (Tracey Fairaway). Rather than address the fact that Ellen is about to head off to college, Eva starts to latch on to Ellen's best friend. They paint each other's toenails, talk about boys, and so on. Eva is only concerned with protecting herself and finding a replacement for Ellen, rather than being there for her daughter.
The acting is great throughout"”Julia Louis-Dreyfus kills it; James Gandolfini kills it; everyone kills it. James Gandolfini is so talented that the sadness of his early death repeatedly draws you out of the movie, reinforcing some of the bittersweet sadness already in the film.
This is a heartfelt film that doesn't play for cheap emotional thrills, a funny film that focuses on telling human truths above all. And it's a concise 93 minutes.
Worth a look for anyone, a must see for those in relationships.
