This is a film about Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn) and her three daughters. Jane is reasonably well off but is getting older and heavier, and, hoping to improve her love life, decides to undergo liposuction. Besides herself, she also obsesses about how *other* things look, buying so many pillows to put on her bed that one of her daughters remarks that there is nowhere to sleep. And Jane is also very particular about how they are arranged.
Jane's oldest daughter is Michelle (Catherine Keener). Michelle was the high school homecoming queen, continuing the image obsession pattern, but that seems to have been the high point of her life. She is married with one daughter, but the marriage is far from a happy one. She makes crafts, exemplified by some overdone miniature chairs, and tries unsuccessfully to sell them. She is a very angry woman, using the F-word frequently and wondering why other people don't do the same. She hasn't ever had a real job.
The next daughter is Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), who is an actress with some small level of success but is very insecure. She is unmarried and has no children, although she is unable to resist bringing home stray dogs. Her nature journalist boyfriend is no help in the self esteem department, seemingly having infinite disdain for everything she does. When we first see Elizabeth, she is posing for a photo for a fashion magazine to promote a film she has a small part in. She is uncomfortable with the clothes and with the heavy makeup, but reluctantly goes along with the shoot anyway because she doesn't feel she has a choice.
The final daughter is much younger. Annie (first time actress Raven Goodwin) is an 8 year old adopted black girl who is close to her mother but not her two much older sisters. She is overweight, but her image issues also involve her skin color and her hair. She freely tells anyone who asks that her birth mother was a crack addict.
The men in the film have smaller roles because this is a film about (but not exclusively for) women. They include Jane's cosmetic surgeon, Michelle's husband, Elizabeth's boyfriend, Kevin McCabe (a star who Elizabeth reads for a part with, played by Dermot Mulroney), and one more I won't mention since to explain his role would give away a small plot point.
Okay, if you insist. If you want to avoid learning more about the plot, *skip the rest of this paragraph and all of the next one...* Michelle does eventually decide to take a real job, although she just takes the first job she sees, developing snapshots at a one hour photo place. Despite the fact that Michelle reminds her 17 year old boss (Jake Gyllenhaal) of his mother, he is attracted to her (he does comment that his mother is cute).
[*keep skipping*] The scene that is most talked about is one in which Elizabeth stands naked in front of Kevin McCabe and insists that he critique her body with complete honesty. He agrees only under extreme duress. She is particularly self conscious about her arms, which she believes are flabby but which he does not mention until she asks.
This is the second film that writer/director Nicole Holofcener has made, and I think that she has succeeded very well in making a highly original film with very interesting characters. Some people feel that the dialog is very good, although on occasion it felt a bit off to me. The story doesn't really go much of anywhere, but that's not really the point of a film like this. The acting was uniformly very good among the adult Marks women. I thought Raven Goodwin was also very good as Annie, which is slightly surprising since the only other child in the film was Michelle's daughter, who may not even have had any lines (I can't remember any).
I did not learn until after the film had ended that it had been shot on 24 frame/second high definition video and later transferred to film. While the look is not that of a highly polished Hollywood film, the quality of the picture was fine throughout.
I saw the film at the Camera Cinema Club in San Jose, CA on 7/14/2002. It is recommended to anyone who likes original independent films.
Jane's oldest daughter is Michelle (Catherine Keener). Michelle was the high school homecoming queen, continuing the image obsession pattern, but that seems to have been the high point of her life. She is married with one daughter, but the marriage is far from a happy one. She makes crafts, exemplified by some overdone miniature chairs, and tries unsuccessfully to sell them. She is a very angry woman, using the F-word frequently and wondering why other people don't do the same. She hasn't ever had a real job.
The next daughter is Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), who is an actress with some small level of success but is very insecure. She is unmarried and has no children, although she is unable to resist bringing home stray dogs. Her nature journalist boyfriend is no help in the self esteem department, seemingly having infinite disdain for everything she does. When we first see Elizabeth, she is posing for a photo for a fashion magazine to promote a film she has a small part in. She is uncomfortable with the clothes and with the heavy makeup, but reluctantly goes along with the shoot anyway because she doesn't feel she has a choice.
The final daughter is much younger. Annie (first time actress Raven Goodwin) is an 8 year old adopted black girl who is close to her mother but not her two much older sisters. She is overweight, but her image issues also involve her skin color and her hair. She freely tells anyone who asks that her birth mother was a crack addict.
The men in the film have smaller roles because this is a film about (but not exclusively for) women. They include Jane's cosmetic surgeon, Michelle's husband, Elizabeth's boyfriend, Kevin McCabe (a star who Elizabeth reads for a part with, played by Dermot Mulroney), and one more I won't mention since to explain his role would give away a small plot point.
Okay, if you insist. If you want to avoid learning more about the plot, *skip the rest of this paragraph and all of the next one...* Michelle does eventually decide to take a real job, although she just takes the first job she sees, developing snapshots at a one hour photo place. Despite the fact that Michelle reminds her 17 year old boss (Jake Gyllenhaal) of his mother, he is attracted to her (he does comment that his mother is cute).
[*keep skipping*] The scene that is most talked about is one in which Elizabeth stands naked in front of Kevin McCabe and insists that he critique her body with complete honesty. He agrees only under extreme duress. She is particularly self conscious about her arms, which she believes are flabby but which he does not mention until she asks.
This is the second film that writer/director Nicole Holofcener has made, and I think that she has succeeded very well in making a highly original film with very interesting characters. Some people feel that the dialog is very good, although on occasion it felt a bit off to me. The story doesn't really go much of anywhere, but that's not really the point of a film like this. The acting was uniformly very good among the adult Marks women. I thought Raven Goodwin was also very good as Annie, which is slightly surprising since the only other child in the film was Michelle's daughter, who may not even have had any lines (I can't remember any).
I did not learn until after the film had ended that it had been shot on 24 frame/second high definition video and later transferred to film. While the look is not that of a highly polished Hollywood film, the quality of the picture was fine throughout.
I saw the film at the Camera Cinema Club in San Jose, CA on 7/14/2002. It is recommended to anyone who likes original independent films.