Lovely and Amazing: DVD & Movie Review (2001)

(Originally published 2001)

Nicole Holofcener's new film, "Lovely and Amazing," focuses on three women and one pre-adolescent girl, all of whom live lives that quietly--and sometimes not so quietly --inspire the film's title.

Take, for instance, Jane (Brenda Blethyn), the matriarch of the group, a woman in her mid-50s with two adult daughters--Michelle (Catherine Keener) and Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer)--and an adopted, 8-year-old African American daughter named Annie (Raven Goodwin).

So desperate is Jane to attract the attention of her handsome younger doctor, whom she secretly loves, she decides to undergo an emergency liposuction in an effort to streamline her chunky body into what she feels will be a sexier, more acceptable shape. Her doctor does notice the effort, but that's only because he's the plastic surgeon who performed the procedure--and his comments, while favorable, are a disappointment that come on the heels of his bill.

Deepening the film’s dysfunction is Jane's daughter, Elizabeth, who has chosen a career in which body-image is everything.

As an aspiring actress and model, Elizabeth has been told countless times that she's "not sexy enough" by an industry infamous for its unobtainable definition of what constitutes physical beauty. So consumed is she with her body, she strips naked in one memorable scene and asks her new lover, a vain television star played by Dermot Mulroney, to critique every inch of her figure, asking him to point out her flaws, which he does with gentle yet pointed thoroughness.

Michelle, a former high school prom queen now faced with a cheating husband, a dead career as an artist, and a body not as firm as she’d like it to be, has her own problems. Knowing her husband is having an affair, she accepts the sexual advances of a 17-year-old boy (Jake Gyllenhaal), incites the wrath of his mother, and then tries to deal with her younger sister, Annie, a compulsive overeater determined to straighten her hair and lighten her dark skin with makeup so she can appear Caucasian and blend in with the world around her.

"Lovely and Amazing," from Holofcener's own script, is about real people. Its characters are human, with all that implies.

Unlike Callie Khouri’s "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood," a fun cartoon, "Amazing" is less interested in nudging its audience with laughter than it is with exploring the ramifications of our culture’s objectification of women. That makes it sound heavier than it is--the film is often funny in an edgy, biting sort of way--but by the time the last reel has played, it isn’t the self-effacing humor you remember as much as it is the pain that inspired it.

Grade: A