Director: Nicole Holofcener
Stars: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Gandolfini, Toni Collete, Catherine Keener, Ben Falcone, Tracey Fairaway, Tavi Gevinson
Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) is a masseuse, divorced and a single parent. At a party she meets a new client (Keener) and Albert (Gandolfini). While she begins a romance with the latter the former continually moans about her ex-husband, and it’s only when certain details come to light that Eva realizes she is dating the ex-husband and she begins to doubt her new relationship.
Being a fan of Seinfeld it’s always good to see a movie with one of the former cast members since they’re very rare. Enough Said definitely skews towards an older audience since it deals with the problems of dating people with baggage, and Eva gets drawn into this world as she suddenly latches on to all the problems her client had with Albert. At first it was a little strange because Dreyfus and Gandolfini didn’t have much chemistry, but it quickly became apparent that it was an accurate reflection of the first date awkwardness, and while I have never been divorced I have been on awkward first dates. But as they continued spending time together you could see that they were a fairly good match.
While their relationship was going strong Eva then found out that Albert was her client’s ex-husband and she began to be swayed by the bad things that her client was saying. While it’s probably an accurate representation of how insecurities present themselves I found it to be an ugly characteristic and I think this was made worse by the fact that Marianne (the client) was shown to be such a pretentious and snobbish person that Eva seems foolish for putting her faith in the opinions of such a person. But, this is more a problem with people rather than the film since I can see people doing this, and being so worried of being hurt again and going through another divorce that their natural instinct is to protect themselves. I just wish Marianne had been a bit nicer so her opinions had more weight to the audience.
Aside from the main plot there were a couple of other things that I liked. One was with Eva’s friends who were going through marriage problems, and this showed the pre-divorce stage, highlighted at an uncomfortable dinner party that showed the differences between a couple that has been together for a long time and one that was new (although both had their problems). The other was about Eva’s daughter, Ellen (Fairley) going away to college. As she pulls away Eva looks to fill the void and this comes in the shape of Ellen’s friend Chloe. I liked how both of these stories were in the background of the main plot yet weaved in with it seamlessly creating an overall picture of the pitfalls that can come in middle age.
Like I said, I think this is aimed towards an older crowd of late-thirties to forties and I think they will get the most out of it, but there’s value here for younger people as well as it promotes being honest and straightforward with each other. As Albert said in one part of the film, “You broke my heart, and I’m too old for that shit.” Aren’t we all Albert, aren’t we all.
So although some of the characters are flawed (Eva especially) I don’t see this as a big downside to the film because it makes her more realistic. I do think the Marianne character could have been tweaked a little bit but it’s a good film that comes at a different angle to most other rom-coms, and thus feels like a nice break from the familiar angst of twenty-something rom-coms.
