Movie Review: You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

Genre: Comedy Drama  

Director: Nicole Holofcener  

Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Owen Teague  

Running Time: 93 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, Beth and Don (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies) are a long-term happily married middle-class couple. She's a moderately successful writer working on her latest book, and he's a therapist. Their son Eliot (Owen Teague) works at a pot store and is writing a play. Beth is close with her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins), an interior decorator, and her husband Mark (Arian Moayed), a struggling theatre actor. When Beth inadvertently overhears Don's real opinion about her latest book, she wonders if she can ever trust him again.

What Works Well: This seemingly simple slice-of-life story carries sly sophistication, as writer and director Nicole Holofcener smoothly works her way to exploring the glue that binds relationships. The blurry lines between encouragement, lies, love, expectation, and frustration emerge as omnipresent trip hazards, both within a love-filled marriage and between parents and their offspring. All the main characters carry endearingly realistic warts, and are afforded the depth to engage in adult conversations. In the central role Julia Louis-Dreyfus shines as the quietly insecure writer and mother, trying just a bit too hard on both fronts. 

What Does Not Work As Well: All the consternation is caused by uniformly first world problems.

Conclusion: A clever tracing of the path to heightened self-awareness.



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