There are not any Earth-shattering battles in Nicole Holofcener’s You Harm My Emotions—no vehicular duels to the demise, or time-traveling invaders, or portals within the sky, or no matter different epic calamities this summer time’s blockbusters might be providing as much as cinemagoers. However the stakes nonetheless really feel apocalyptic. The plot is about in movement when Beth (performed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a trainer and author who’s engaged on a brand new novel, overhears her husband, Don (Tobias Menzies), offhandedly confess a darkish secret to somebody: He doesn’t assume her newest manuscript is excellent. Upon listening to this, Beth spirals into pure existential anguish, and it doesn’t really feel unearned.
For many years, Holofcener has made films about upper-middle-class intellectuals hurting each other’s emotions; her physique of labor contains a few of the most enduring indie satires of a technology. But she’s vastly underrated, maybe as a result of her movies are usually about slight topics, or maybe as a result of comedy-dramas have change into embarrassingly scarce in Hollywood lately. However though Holofcener’s material is trivial, her movies don’t really feel disposable. You Harm My Emotions is droll, nevertheless it’s additionally an (appropriately titled) emotional curler coaster. Its adroit high quality mirrors all of Holofcener’s greatest work, together with the devastating Beautiful & Wonderful, the spiky Please Give, and the fantastically melancholic Sufficient Mentioned, wherein Louis-Dreyfus performs an analogue for the writer-director.
You Harm My Emotions additionally has a self-reflective tinge. Holofcener has stated the film is just not autobiographical however a few chilling what-if that she’s lengthy harbored: What if the folks she most trusted didn’t, in reality, get pleasure from her work? What if the again pats and supportive feedback she acquired from her closest family and friends have been phony? Don makes only one glib critique, nothing extra, nevertheless it is sufficient to make her doubt her complete profession—a nightmare that’s each deeply relatable and undeniably, hilariously outsize.
The truth is that Beth doesn’t actually have a lot to complain about. She enjoys a pleasant New York Metropolis life with a well-appointed condominium, a dependable sister named Sarah (Michaela Watkins), a gentle educating job, and a husband and a son who each appear dedicated to her. However Holofcener cleverly provides tiny cracks of insecurity to each character arc. Beth and Don’s partnership is in a little bit of a rut; they offer one another the identical sorts of boring anniversary items yr after yr. Beth’s son, Eliott (Owen Teague), is a delicate soul misplaced in a dead-end job at a marijuana vendor. And Sarah is fearful about her husband, Mark (Arian Moayed), and his long-term prospects as a struggling actor.
Holofcener meticulously colours in these particulars, together with the looming presence of Beth’s mom, Georgia (a hysterically imperious Jeannie Berlin), and Don’s misgivings as a therapist whose sufferers appear dissatisfied together with his work. When Beth unintentionally hears Don’s criticism, the admission is an atom bomb that exposes everybody else’s buried anxieties. In the meantime, Beth now fears that she’ll by no means belief her husband once more, though his transgression was, in idea, fairly minor.
Louis-Dreyfus is a grasp at promoting a visceral sense of damage towards a comedy-of-errors backdrop. I used to be reminded of her equally blistering work within the largely forgotten Downhill, one other portrait of a fracturing marriage. That movie didn’t actually work, however she had an impressive star flip as somebody wrestling with a violation. In You Harm My Emotions, the violation is way shallower, however Holofcener traces its fallout with sufficient nuance to transcend accusations of pettiness. Sure, the one issues getting damage on this film are emotions—however for a few of us, no situation is extra terrifying than that.