Stream It Or Skip It: ‘You Hurt My Feelings’ on VOD, an Inspired Comedy Collab Between Nicole Holofcener and Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Between You Hurt My Feelings (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) and 2013’s terrific Enough Said, one hopes that filmmaker Nicole Holofcener and actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus will become the Scorsese and DiCaprio of comedies about aging, modestly intellectual Caucasian New Yorkers. Fresh off a venture outside her usual light-dramedy zone, i.e., co-scripting The Last Duel, Holofcener wrote and directed this story about middle-aged adults wrestling with whether unfettered honesty can exist in longstanding human relationships. And the answer to that is, of course, a hard MAYBE.  

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Irony alert: Don (Tobias Menzies) is a therapist and marriage counselor. We meet him as he sits across from two bitter bickersons, Jonathan and Carolyn (real-life husband-and-wife David Cross and Amber Tamblyn), advising them to share “more honest feelings” during their session. Easier said than done, especially for Don, whose hypocrisy will soon be showing – even though it’s more complicated than that, because applying the fodder of one’s professional life to that of one’s personal life never, ever works. Cut to: His wife of many years, Beth (Louis-Dreyfus), as she drops by the weed shop to visit their son Eliot (Owen Teague) while he works the counter; she’s too nice to stop him and his co-workers from raiding the box of doughnuts she bought for her writing-workshop students. At the workshop, the question arises as to what one should do if they write unflattering things about loved ones, and her reply is, “Write your heart out and don’t show it to them.” No surprise, her hypocrisy will soon be showing, too.

Later, the collection of awkward interactions that is this movie begins to intensify. It’s Don and Beth’s anniversary. They’re at dinner, and they exchange gifts: He gives her some earrings shaped like leaves, she gives him a v-neck sweater. Neither is particularly enthused with their gift, but they smile and feign joy anyway, and I wonder if we’re the only ones who notice the phony. As they go about their normal lives, it’s clear that Don and Beth love each other. There’s no threat of a busted marriage here, but their professional lives are increasingly undermining their emotional security. Don’s patients complain that they’re getting nothing out of their sessions. And Beth struggles with the book she’s writing, a fiction mystery, the follow-up to her memoir, which sold OK, but not that well; her agent thinks she needs to work through another draft, but Don thinks it’s great, just great, it’s wonderful, she’s such a terrific writer, and all that. 

One day, Beth and her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) are hanging out while Don and Sarah’s husband Mark (Arian Moayed) go shopping for socks. Yes, socks. Mark’s really into socks. Anyway, the women decide to drop by the sock shop to say hi but they overhear a conversation where Don confesses that he doesn’t think Beth’s book is very good. The women leave without their husbands noticing. Beth is crushed. She stops on the way home for a drink and asks loaded questions of the couple next to her: What do they do for a living, and does each like the other’s work? Beth sips from her martini glass as the couple starts fighting. Hey, at least she’s not alone in this world.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Louis-Dreyfus is in the habit of being the funniest person in this type of understated, character-driven comedy – Enough Said, Downhill, the slightly less-understated You People. Oh, and Deconstructing Harry, by Woody Allen, whose films about neurotic New Yorkers seem to have informed Holofcener’s work.

Performance Worth Watching: Louis-Dreyfus is in the habit of being the funniest pers- right. I’ll just add her TV highlights to the list in praise of the forces of good in the world: Veep, The New Adventures of Old Christine and a four-way tie for funniest person in Seinfeld. 

Memorable Dialogue: One of the women of the barroom couple points out an example of how language evolves: “You know, ‘nice’ isn’t a nice word.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: You Hurt My Feelings begins as a grab-bag of instances that gradually come together as a bemused musing on truth, honesty, passive-aggressive behavior, betrayal, the illusion of propriety, the struggle to not let our jobs define who we are, the fragility of ego and a few other interrelated ideas that comprise the personal lives of human adults. Holofcener structures the screenplay like a mosaic of individual scenes prompting us to step back and look at it as an appropriately rough-around-the-edges portrait of adults fudging their way through a weird, fuzzy psycho-developmental stage between stasis and progress. 

So is what Don and Beth have here a dead shark? No, it’s not that simple. But it’s definitely a shark that’s a little tired and unsure of itself, and maybe isn’t quite as good at hunting fish and tearing them to shreds and gulping down the visceral bloody chunks as it used to be, and wondering if it’ll ever be as good at it as it once was. That’s a pretty common conundrum – in the abstract anyway, and Holofcener roots out the poignancy in it without sacrificing any of the comedy, or the relatively lighthearted tone she nurtures. 

Louis-Dreyfus leads a talented cast clearly inspired by Holofcener’s script, which foregoes self-conscious cleverness and broad comedy for sharply honed wit. Note how Louis-Dreyfus delivers a line about her memoir – “Well, maybe if Dad hadn’t just been verbally abusive, it would’ve been a bestseller” – and consider if anyone else could’ve delivered it with the kind of funny-but-weary borderline-cynicism that she does. (Maybe Steve Martin could’ve? Or Diane Keaton?) Holofcener maintains a tight focus on her characters, and lets plot, dialogue and ideas spring organically from them. That’s a wise move. Are the characters’ problems solved? No. Are problems ever truly solved? Unless it’s a mathematical proof, probably not. They’re just worked through. That’s another wise move, reflected in the film’s conclusion, which shows no interest in tidy resolution, instead choosing to show us people working through the ironies and hypocrisies that are a part of everyone’s lives.   

Our Call: You Hurt My Feelings is a buoyant, exquisitely written and casted film that occasionally flirts with silliness, but is never insubstantial. STREAM IT and hope for another inspired Holofcener/Louis-Dreyfus collaboration soon. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.