4 July, 2010
Nicole Holofcener’s slice-of-life movie, set in affluent NYC, is a real gem. She writes terrific dialogue – moving deftly between comedy and pathos – and elicits very fine performances from her cast (Catherine Keener, Rebecca Hall and others, all marvellous).
If CK Williams had been a film-maker…. In fact, it also made me think of my brother Anthony, because of its delight in well-observed, comic dialogue, its interest in contemporary relationships and its analysis of the guilt that goes with affluence. In some ways it could be the movie version of Anthony’s wonderful radio play, Cigarettes & Chocolate. They’re both about a middle-class woman in crisis, trying to understand inequality – and the impact of that central collapse on those around her.
Another movie I like in this terrain is the Italian film Caos Calma (aka Quiet Chaos, 2008), based on the lovely book by Sandro Veronesi, in which a bereaved man stops going to work….
There you go. Hot tips.