review: you hurt my feelings
written for "film criticism" at eugene lang college of liberal arts, spring 2024
In Nicole Holofcener’s latest film, communication is a battlefield. Talking with people, even those closest to you, is full of high-stakes decisions. Do you tell your friend he might be bad at acting? Do you tell your husband he’d look ridiculous with an eye job? Do you confront someone about the things they said behind your back? What would they say if you did tell them? What would they say if you didn’t?
These are the questions behind You Hurt My Feelings. The film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies as Beth and Don, a happy couple thriving in New York City. Beth is a writer working on a new novel after a middling release of a memoir, while Don is a therapist struggling to make headway with his patients. Holofcener stages the film in a series of short scenes, with the pair going about their days engaging with a rotating cast of characters: Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins), a burned-out interior designer for the wealthy; Sarah’s husband Mark (Arian Moayed), an anxious actor trying to make it big; Beth and Don’s son Eliot, an aspiring playwright struggling under his parents’ high expectations and “perfect” relationship; and Beth’s mother, a “tough love” type with quickly changing moods. The film hits its pivotal moment when Beth and Sarah overhear Don complaining to Mark that he doesn’t like Beth’s new book and doesn’t know how to tell her. The revelation causes Beth to reexamine her marriage, her work, and her relationships.
You Hurt My Feelings often seems torn between two worlds. Its characters are at once childishly sensitive, as the title suggests, and tiredly stoic. The setting feels whimsical and fantastical (a writer, a therapist, an actor, and an interior designer all making enough money to afford beautiful NYC apartments and beautiful wardrobes? In what world?) and uncomfortably realistic. The cast, particularly Louis-Dreyfus and Watkins, are excellent at portraying the barrier between what we think and what we say, and the panicked performance required to preserve that barrier.
The film returns to the problem of how we act to protect or hurt each other’s feelings again and again, exploring how lying to be nice can feel like a betrayal through Don and Beth’s plotline, then countering by showing how the “just being honest!” excuse hurts just as much. This counter plays out perfectly between Beth and her mother; Beth is disappointed in the lack of success of her memoir about her verbally abusive father, wondering often if it would have done better had he been physically abusive as well. But when Beth’s mother tactlessly observes that “it did okay, it could’ve done better,” Beth becomes offended and prickly as her own thoughts bounce back at her.
Occasionally, the tension of the social interactions becomes a little suffocating, but it’s tempered with humor. Louis-Dreyfus’s comedic resume does a lot of heavy-lifting here: we’re so accustomed to seeing her be funny that she can brighten up a scene with an awkward expression or dry delivery. Menzies nails the naive husband role but brings a psychological depth to it, both through his character’s emotional intelligence and his lack of self-esteem and confidence. They make up a strange, complex couple: charmingly domestic and sappy while deep fault lines lay underneath the surface. Holofcener largely makes her argument through their relationship, but Don and Beth never feel like pawns regurgitating talking points, as sometimes happens in films like this. Instead, their relationship is tender, frustrating, loving, petty, and all of the warring contradictions that make up a modern relationship.
The problem with most social exploration films is that they’re inevitably unable to answer the big questions they ask. You Hurt My Feelings isn’t exempt from this trap; it can’t tell its audience how to strike the razor-thin balance between honesty and cruelty and pity. But its characters are endearing enough that seeing them try is its own reward, and its own lesson. Maybe the point isn’t to avoid ever stepping on each other’s toes. Maybe it’s that we know we inevitably will and make the attempt to do better anyways.
written for "film criticism" at eugene lang college of liberal arts, spring 2024. taught by leo goldstein.