You know, we’ve always liked Nicole Holofcener’s films — Enough Said is a really swell indie (R.I.P. James Gandolfini) — but in the last few years, the writer-director has become an even stronger writer, co-writing the screenplays for Can You Ever Forgive Me? and The Last Duel, which are both fantastic movies. So, we were pretty stoked to see her new film, You Hurt My Feelings, listed in the program at Sundance this year. Alas, we weren’t able to catch it in Park City, but we weren’t really worried about getting a chance to see it later on this year — it was, in fact, backed with the full faith and credit of A24 distribution, and the studio dropped a trailer for the Julia Louis-Dreyfus comedy earlier on Tuesday.
Peep it:
So instead of posting the tiny-tiny little synopsis provided by A24, here’s the Sundance summary from the film’s section in the program:
“New York novelist Beth has been working for years on the follow-up to her somewhat successful memoir, sharing countless drafts with her approving, supportive husband Don. Beth’s world quickly unravels when she overhears Don admit to her brother-in-law, Mark, that actually, he doesn’t like the new book. She vents to her sister Sara that decades of a loving, committed marriage pale in comparison to this immense betrayal. Meanwhile, therapist Don faces his own professional problems as he finds himself unable to care about or even recall his unhappy patients’ issues anymore… and they’ve begun to notice.
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener returns to Sundance for the fourth time with a cleverly observed, witty film that delicately skewers its sharply drawn, imperfect characters’ insecurities, privilege, and narcissism. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies lead a uniformly superb, funny cast, as they pull everyone around them into the fallout of navigating whether loving someone also requires loving their work. Michaela Watkins stands out as the frank, unflappable Sara, who handles her own marriage to sensitive actor, Mark (played with charm by Arian Moayed), much more deftly.”
Film festivals! They actually have to sell you with words!
Anyway, You Hurt My Feelings hits theaters on May 26. Time to stock up on emotional band-aids.