Michelle Marks: Catherine Keener
Jane Marks: Brenda Blethyn
Elizabeth Marks: Emily Mortimer
Annie Marks: Raven Goodwin
Lorraine: Aunjanue Ellis
10 April 2003
by Jasmine Park
Anything but. It's anyone's guess why this 2002 film by Nicole Holofcener received such positive reviews, since it has absolutely no cinematic quality, even charm; it's all just plain digital ugliness and shallow characters who redefine the term "insecurity." The film serves no clear purpose, except to reiterate how incredibly boring completely normal people are. Don't get me wrong - I don't have anything against movies about "normal" people, but at least give them some extraordinary event in their lives; even the slightest sense of humor does wonders…something to make the two-hour experience worthwhile. Instead, Lovely & Amazing is filled with nasty conversations and unpleasant, awkward situations, and in the end, you stumble out feeling like you've spent a long day with some insufferable, distant relatives.
The story concerns a middle-aged woman named Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn) and her three daughters. Two are adults: Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), an aspiring actress; and Michelle (Catherine Keener), a depressed housewife. Jane also has an adopted 8-year-old daughter named Annie (Raven Goodwin), who happens to be black. That this utterly self-centered woman would have adopted a young black girl is truly baffling; through the whole movie, Jane can only whine about her liposuction surgery or fantasize about her doctor, while Elizabeth and Jane get to babysit Annie. And what a treat that is - even more so for the movie's audience who gets to watch them. Goodwin has earned quite a lot of praise for her "honest" portrayal of this overweight black girl who suffers from an obvious identity crisis, and I suppose some credit is due, since she plays her character believably. However, Annie is so insufferable that it is difficult for me to praise Goodwin any more than the other actresses in this film. While she does not fall into either category of cliché child characters in cinema today (she is neither a demonic brat nor a prodigy), the fact remains that she, like the rest of the film, is just plain boring.
Elizabeth, the actress, is the only semi-likable character, largely due to Mortimer's sweet demeanor, which the film's costume designer works hard to stifle. Much has been made of the scene in which, after she sleeps with a famous actor, Kevin (Dermot Mulroney), Elizabeth requests that he dissect her looks feature by feature. But the scene doesn't register as much of anything; Kevin's matter-of-fact criticisms only reiterate every issue with Elizabeth's body that she obsesses about for the first hour of the movie.
Worst of all is, of course, Catherine Keener. Could she be any more of a nasty bitch? This is her worst role yet - a useless housewife who is bitterly angry at the world for not buying her shitty little craft projects (handmade wrapping paper, tiny chairs made of twigs) and whose favorite phrase is, "Well, just fuck off!" While her husband has an affair with her best friend, Michelle gets a job at a one-hour photo place where an impressionable teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal) develops a crush on her. But nothing can save this character from her permanent state of irritability.
At least Lovely & Amazing isn't the typical Hollywood mushy-women fare, but it's typical arthouse wanna-be-Mike-Leigh mushy-women fare, which isn't much better. An hour into it, the film has that obligatory moment where the title comes up in dialogue, when Jane tells a self-pitying Elizabeth that she is "lovely and amazing," but given how utterly hollow these characters are, Jane's words only sound insincere and ultimately mean nothing. I'd take a predictable but solidly written weeper any day over this; at least the experience can be cathartic instead of wasteful.
Lions Gate Films presents a film written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. Running time: 91 minutes. R (for language and nudity).
Dermot Mulroney and Emily Mortimer in
Lovely & Amazing.
Catherine Keener and Jake Gyllenhaal.
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