Lovely and Amazing | Review

Unpretentious film is a charming summer treat.

Every now and then there is a film that will go mostly unnoticed, actually there is probably one a week from the independent film scene, but tossed up upon the Hollywood heavyweights are the smaller films with heart- insert Lovely and Amazing among the films of that category. Like in her past 1996 effort Walking and Talking and perhaps some of her directed episodes of HBO’s Sex in the City, Nicole Holofcener brings some more of what she knows best-the female POV character struggle in a contemporary urban world in the genre of a light drama.

This is the sort of film that will make you smile and sympathize; it pushes aside the phoney movie conventions of the perfect, good looking, be all that you can be Robocop woman of the 21st century for the authentic approach of the more actual and factual portrait of life’s real women, the real mothers and daughters dealing with real life issues with a sprinkling of character personality flaws. The estrogenic-charged cast includes- the mother fighting played by Brenda Blethyn (Saving Grace) the aging process with some liposuction-the daughter played by Catherine Keener (Death to Smoochy) with the lifeless marriage who prefers the cartoon network and the comfort of her arts and craft, the other same demographic sister played by Emily Mortimer (Formula 51) as a struggling actress in the cruel world of the entertainment business and the adopted age 8 black child who is going through a midlife crisis dealing with loaded issues of her own. You’d think that this be the close-knit family-a strong unit like the Waltons, but they are very much solitary in their impasse. Bridging the gap between the group-besides the fact that they are all women and linked by the Marks family name-is the construction of the narrative which focuses on their individual plights which are brought together in equally shared screen time performances and by the resonating theme. Holofcener’s operative and style is as pleasant as the story’s subtle look at woman’s self-image and self-esteem of a female foursome stuck in their individual bubbles- this is broken in a poignant scene inside a popular 1 Billion sold fast-food chain. There are plenty of tender moments-and thankfully not too many, the melodramatic element is left on the shelf and replaced with petite-sized sequences of life’s disappointing moments brought to life by some strong performances from Keener a Holofcener-film veteran and first-time on the screen child actor Ravin Goodwin who glimmering performance perforates the audience’s heart with her child-like innocence.

Holofcener’s style of filmmaking lacks a certain poignancy-with a subdued episodic film structure that doesn’t resonate in the same sort of brilliance and perhaps an unfair comparison to a Mike Figgis or John Sayles character-driven films, but the point I am trying to make is that it doesn’t have the deep signification that drives the film into a viewer-satisfying state of epiphany. The subplots such as the romance with a teenage co-worker-Jake Gyllenhaal (The Good Girl) or the theatrics of the spontaneous romance with an A-actor in Dermot Mulroney (My Best Friend’s Wedding ) could have been cut out of the film or replaced and it wouldn’t have made much a difference. Don’t expect to the leave the theatre and be marvelled with this film-it is simply not that type of a picture, however Lovely & Amazing has a lot going for it namely the charming ingredients of great characters and great performances and a simplicity that makes this the delicious film pleasure that one should oblige oneself to see.

Rating 3 stars