LOVELY & AMAZING
Rating out of 4 stars: 3 Reviewed by Harvey Karten Lions Gate Director: Nicole Holofeener Writer: Nicole Holofeener Cast: Catherine Keener, Brenda Blethyn, Emily Mortimer, Raven Goodwin, Aunjanue Ellis, Clark Gregg, Jake Gyllenhaal, James LeGros, Michael Nouri, Dermot Mulroney Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 6/19/02
"Lovely & Amazing" is the sort of movie that a caustic writer- director like Neil LaBute could dish out if he were taking a cocktail of Valium and Ecstasy. Nicole Holofeener's perfectly lovely film contrasts bitchiness and warmth, intimacy and off- putting neuroses in this character-driven examination of three women cared for by a mom who apparently has communicated both her shticklach and her charm to her brood in some undisclosed American locale.
The production follows by six years Ms. Holofeener's "Walking and Talking," also starring Catherine Keener, dealing with the envy that Keener's character feels when she learns that her best friend, the woman played by Anne Heche, is getting married. I suppose some would call this kind of film a chick flick but then again, even if some works were directed primarily to an audience of women, wouldn't the male gender like to learn what the fairer sex are thinking and feeling?
Since there are no longer what we used to think of as conventional families any more in America, there's nothing all that strange about the brood presided over by Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn), a late-middle-aged woman who has two daughters, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) and Michelle (Catherine Keener) and one eight-year-old black girl she adopted not far back, Annie (Raven Goodwin). The urge to adopt must have rubbed off on Elizabeth who acts on her compulsive urge to take in stray dogs whether they want homes or not, but this is not a dog's tale but rather a finely spun tapestry of four women, each adorable in her own way, each capable of getting attention in her own neurotic style.
Elizabeth, who is kind of scrawny, is uptight about her body and in one unusual scene involving extended full frontal nudity which is anything but prurient (sorry Emily), Elizabeth poses in front of a new lover, the celebrated actor Kevin McCabe (Dermot Mulroney) who comments on the lass's full frontal looks in the key scene of this poignant comedy. For her part Michelle, in a loveless marriage to a man who does not appreciate her artistic talents, sets her eyes on seventeen-year- old Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal) whose mother is ready to press charges of statutory rape. The family prodigy, eight-year-old Annie, gets attention by eating up the house and then some and by pretending she has drowned in the community pool while she is watched over by a concerned role model, Lorraine (Aunjanue Ellis who is unrecognizable from her role in "Undercover Brother." Nor is mama Jane too old to worry about her body: she signs up for liposuction to remove just ten pounds of fat from her stomach, in no small part because she seems to have a crush on the surgeon.
The women are, gratefully, far removed from the irritating group in Khalie Kouri's "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," people to whom probably no one in the audience could relate personally. Holofeener's people are as recognizable as our next-door neighbors, except that they probably have less fear of expressing their feelings of inadequacy than the strange group down in hall in Apt. 3-B. Emily Mortimer, noted for her role in "Notting Hill," here looks as American as apple pie while Catherine Keener, who can best personify the dual nature of bitch-goddesshood and vulnerability, can do no wrong.
Rated R. Running time: 91 minutes. (C) 2002 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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