DVD Review: Lovely and Amazing (B+)

Lovely and Amazing (2002)
Directed by Nicole Holofcener
Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer and Raven Goodwin
MPAA: R
Grade B+

Review by Ellyn Elm

In Lovely and Amazing, director Nicole Holofcener has created a really wonderful, perceptive film about women and self esteem. Her characters are smart, unpredictable and true to life. For those of you rolling your eyes at the thought of yet another "chick-flick" melodrama, relax, Lovely and Amazing refuses to pander to the heavy strings and Kleenex set.

Set in Los Angeles, the film follows the lives of matriarch Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn) and her three daughters: Michelle (Catherine Keener) a struggling artist stuck in a boring marriage, followed by Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), an aspiring actress and finally 8-year-old Annie (Raven Goodwin), a precocious African-American girl adopted into the family. After Jane's liposuction surgery goes awry, the sisters awkwardly come together even as their lives begin to spin out of control.

The beauty of this film lies in the subtlety of dialogue and body language. Holofcener does a superb job in expressing visually, the ineffable. We see how much these women love each other and we understand how their various insecurities keep them always at arm's length. Not heavy handed or depressing, Lovely and Amazing is a refreshingly low key look at a very familiar subject.

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