Enough Said is only playing in two theaters in Manhattan, the Angelika, and the AMC Lincoln Square uptown. It opened yesterday, and Allison and I bought tickets to the 7:10 show at the Angelika. Beforehand, we went out for Mexican right around the corner, so I stopped in at the theatre to pick up my tickets. It was already a madhouse, with a line snaking through the lobby space. “What are you all waiting for?” I asked someone. “Enough Said,” five people informed me. Allison and I came back after dinner and joined the ongoing snaking line for the 7:10 show. By the time we reached the theatre it was already so packed that we couldn’t find two seats together and had to split up. It was a sold out show. I’m so glad I saw it on its opening weekend, when the crowds turned out. It gives a real visceral sense of how well the film plays, something that would have felt quite different if I saw it at the tail-end of its run, on a Tuesday morning, with 5 other people in the audience. There’s nothing like a crowd, and there’s nothing like a crowd of random people that, through some magical process, gels into An Audience. It doesn’t happen often. Sometimes you go to sold-out shows and you leave just feeling annoyed at the rude-ness of humanity, and the bad behavior, and whatever, blah blah, you’re boring if you talk about that stuff too much. But sometimes … sometimes … a bunch of strangers become One. Those are the movie-going experiences I love the most.
Of course there is a sadness surrounding this film, even though it’s a sweet and sharp romantic comedy. It’s one of Gandolfini’s last film roles. It’s coming out after he’s died. His absence fills the film, an awareness of the hole he has left. The film ends rather abruptly, the screen goes to black, and as the credits start to roll, the words “FOR JIM” stand alone on the screen. A woman sitting two seats down from me whispered to her friend, “I’m feeling so sad.” There’s a strange sensation, watching him in this film. He’s so excellent in it, so easy with this material which was not in his wheelhouse career-wise (playing a romantic lead in a rom-com). But it suits him. He is a credible and effective romantic lead, and how refreshing it is because he seems like such a real guy. His charm is palpable, his sense of humor, all things that any woman not devoted to being a Real Housewife would fall for, or at least be drawn to. Real people fall in love all the time, although you’d never know it from the trends in Hollywood casting. Real people with weird teeth, pre-post-menopausal people, guys with big guts, whatever, you name it, people are hooking up. Feelings about not being young, not being svelte, not being television-ready are certainly a reality, and it’s hard to tune out the messages that Love Is Not For You Because You Wouldn’t Be Cast In a Hollywood Rom-Com, but people DO tune out those messages and find each other. Sometimes. Enough Said, thankfully, is not a Beauty and the Beast story, it is not about how a shallow woman learned to love the Big Lug. It’s nothing that cliche, although elements of that come into play. It’s written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who has made a career out of examining and investigating social situations, love and friendship, angst (annoying, self-defeating, or actual), a search for meaning and connection. When Gandolfini, as Albert, says to Louis-Dreyfus, “I know this might sound corny … but you broke my heart.” you don’t feel a scripted line there. You feel his life, you feel his broken heart. And he says it with a small smile on his face, kind of a wince and a smile at the same time. It’s fucking real.
The whole set-up is a bit artificial, but I forgave it because the ultimate goal of the film is to examine how we fall in love, and how we also sabotage our feelings because we are trying to “protect” ourselves. Happens all the time. So. Albert meets Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) at a party. Eva is a massage therapist, who spends her days traveling around to clients, lugging her massage table. She was divorced a couple years back, and she has a daughter (Tracey Allen), who is getting ready to go away to college. In their first conversation at this party, Eva learns that Albert, too, has a daughter leaving for college, so they talk a little bit about that, and there’s a spark, there’s a teasing energy that is unmistakably flirtatious. Eva tells her friend Sarah (Toni Collette, who is hysterical here) about it later. What’s he like? Oh … he’s kind of fat … but … I liked him. They go out. They have dinner. They talk the whole time. He drops her off. They don’t kiss, but you know it’s a matter of time. They click. It’s natural. The way you sometimes just click with another human being. The romance unfolds with such a good eye/ear for those beginning moments, the awkwardness, the uncertainty, the sort of “Geez, will he/she like what I look like naked” thought process, always going on, and then when you throw caution to the wind and get physical. Because what the hell, who the hell cares about your big belly or your cellulite? There is sex to be had. We like each other. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Enough Said is so good, and so accurate, about the Beginnings. The tentative getting to know one another, the gentle way of interrogating someone (“you have 80 bottles of mouthwash … why?”), and the way we start to trust. Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini make a compelling couple. You get why he likes her and vice versa. You can SEE them start to let their guards down. He works at a television archive, and there’s a scene where he gives her a tour of his facility, and he tells her about what he does. Stops himself at one point and says, “I’m sorry, am I boring you?” And she says, surprised, “No! It’s interesting!” So real. They bond about having daughters going off to college. When they finally have sex, it’s great.
To complicate matters, slightly artifically, at the same party where Eva met Albert, she also met this fascinating kind of fabulous woman named Marianne (regular Holofcener muse Catherine Keener). Marianne is a poet. An actual poet, who “makes her living” at poetry and Eva is drawn to her, somehow, and Marianne becomes a new massage client. They become “friends”, although their friendship is mostly Eva listening to Marianne bitch and moan about her gross ex-husband, who had a big belly, refused to lose weight, was gross with guacamole, and was, in general, a disgusting bore. Bad in bed, too. Of course you know immediately that there is a coincidence at work here, that Albert is the man Marianne is talking about, but Eva is a bit slow on the uptake, and once she gets it, she does not tell Marianne that she is dating that guy. As the romance unfolds on the one side, a sort of one-sided “friendship” develops between Eva and Marianne on the other side. Eva knows there’s something wrong about it, but she can’t seem to disentangle herself, and also, as she tells Sarah – that hanging out with Marianne and hearing her complain about her ex is almost like having “your very own Trip Advisor”. Wouldn’t it be helpful if we could talk to our brand new beloved’s exes and see what the complaints are? Wouldn’t it help us to make our decisions?
Clearly not always. Eva learns the hard way.
Louis-Dreyfus, who has rarely starred in full-length films, is wonderful as Eva, awkward, sometimes heartbreaking, and (as was always true in her role as Elaine in “Seinfeld”), willing to come off as unsympathetic. Good for her. There’s one pretty brutal dinner party where Eva, a little bit tipsy, starts criticizing Albert to her friends, in front of him. She thinks she’s being funny and fond, but what she’s actually doing is picking on him. Diminishing him. Albert sees what’s happening and doesn’t understand why she’s doing it, what has changed. It’s painful. Love is scary so we can talk ourselves out of it and that’s what Eva is doing. The more she hears about how gross Marianne found her ex, the more she starts to look at him with a critical eye.
There are details in the script that I loved.
— Sarah’s penchant for rearranging her furniture on a daily basis. So funny. Her husband (played by the always-wonderful Ben Falcone) comes into the room, looks at the couches and chairs, and says, “Again?”
— Catherine Keener’s very funny performance as a totally humorless woman.
— The growing bond between Eva and Chloe (Tavi Gevinson), her daughter’s best friend. It’s subtle, and it happens almost without you noticing it. With the impending departure of her daughter, Eva is feeling lost. Her daughter is pulling away from her, in preparation for college, and it’s painful on both sides. She bonds with Chloe in a more girly-girly way, sharing confidences and having pedicures, and Eva’s daughter is finally like, “Chloe, can I please have my mom back?”
— There’s an ongoing bit with one of Eva’s massage clients. There’s a long steep flight of steps up to his apartment, and he always stands at the top of the stairs, smiling at her, as she struggles her way up with the massage-table – “and he never once has offered to help!” We see this scene play out 3 or 4 times over the course of the film, and so we’re sort of set up to judge this guy as ill-mannered, boorish. You can’t offer to help the lady with the table? What is your problem? Finally, of course, the moment comes when she asks, halfway up the stairs, “Could you give me a hand with this?” The way he reacts is not what we have been set up to expect, and it’s a beautiful moment. It’s a joke that was set up from the first 5 minutes of the film and the way it was resolved was satisfying and affirming.
— The shot where Eva and her ex-husband take their daughter to the airport to fly off to college is killer. I was a mess.
The scenes between Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini are a feast, for those who love the give-and-take of acting. It is a pleasure to watch these two people onscreen together. A pleasure mixed with sorrow, because of the knowledge that he is no longer with us.
Thank goodness Enough Said exists, at least in terms of Gandolfini’s legacy. It adds nuance and shadings to our understanding of who he was as an actor. And as the days go on, it becomes more and more apparent what we have lost.
“…[W]e also sabotage our feelings because we are trying to “protect” ourselves. Happens all the time.”
I should probably have this engraved on my tombstone, perhaps in MS Comic Sans.
(For the record, I have two bottles of mouthwash.)
You should see the film! It’s all about the desire to self-protect and how … self-destructive it can be!
Comic Sans on a tombstone! A frightening thought.
Great job! (hope you don’t get tired of hearing that).
Gandolfini was a revelation to me in his post Soprano work. Rarely has an actor been so identified with a role, and he was truly larger than life as Tony. One of the great roles of all time in my opinion.
It’s hard for an actor to separate himself from a role like that, yet when I saw him in both In the Loop and Zero Dark Thirty, where he played two completely different military guys, I never saw Tony at all. He just became these new guys. That’s very impressive to me. In The Loop was a great comedy, and he fit right in.
Louis-Dreyfus is currently outstanding in VEEP, which I believe starts a new season soon. Well worth checking out if you haven’t. The willingness to be unsympathetic indeed. Yet highly relatable.
And Holofcener makes the kind of movies they usually don’t let you make, where the characters behave like real people you might actually know. Her Walking and Talking was a brilliant look at relationship behavior. Keener sabotages her own potential happiness by referring to the guy she likes (played by the underrated Kevin Corrigan) as “the ugly guy”, which comes back to bite her in the ass. That movie made a really strong impression on me, even though nothing much happens in the way of what we might call “plot”.
Glad this was sold out, sounds like a good one.
Todd – I’ve been re-watching The Sopranos over the last month – I watched it when it was first on, of course – and it really is an amazing performance, which just gets more impressive with retrospect. It is so sustained, so logical – AND that’s not who Gandolfini really was. In person, in interviews, he was more like the guy in Enough Said. Gentle, funny, intelligent, modest. So this is a character part – and he is completely believable.
But how wonderful that he even got a role like this one in Enough Said … Both Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus talk about his nervousness about it. He did it BECAUSE he was scared of it. A true actor.
He is beautiful in the film. I hope you get to see it!
and I agree with you – I loved Walking and Talking, although it’s been a long time since I saw it.
Eva (in Enough Said) behaves terribly – and yet the script is so rich, that instead of thinking, “God, she is a horrible person” – you root for her to CUT THE SHIT and accept some happiness. Huge difference in audience reaction. You know?
I mean, at one point, she literally hides in a bush. You CRINGE for her.
I read in an interview with the director that both Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus were shy with one another – and intimidated. Both thought the other was so awesome, so talented, etc. And you can really feel that in the dynamic – it really felt like the beginnings of a romance, with the awkwardness, the desire to get REALLY CLOSE, to never let the person get away, and then the fear that you will seem “too much”.
Also, I think it was in Dana Stevens’ review … she makes the point that so much of falling in love has to do with ‘being funny’ for the other person. You know, trying out your jokes – making someone laugh … So often movies just flat out do not deal with this important real-life aspect of romance. They focus on the lovey-dovey stuff or the sex. But to make someone burst out laughing? PITTER-PAT goes the heart. Enough Said really gets that.
There’s a moment on their first date when they go out for frozen yogurt. They pick out what they want and then at the cash register, he turns to her and says, “Do you have any money?” And you see it sort of THUD in her, but she skips over it and goes for her wallet, like, “of course, of course” – and he says, “I’m KIDDING!” And then they both burst into laughter – and it’s just so real, so … sweet.
I love your description of how Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus were a bit in awe of one another, and how it seems they brought that to the performances.
I know this is a movie I will like just from your description. Where people act in a way that resembles true human behavior. Your recent review of I Could Never be Your Woman seems to be from the same mold. Maybe a woman’s sensibility is required to direct these kids of films?
It would have been real interesting to see where Gandofini’s career would have gone…such a shame.
Yeah – that shyness/intimidation that they felt about one another as actors – translated into the same sort of tentative quality that is present when two people fall for each other. You know … you give the other person SO much power. You have to relax into it a bit when you realize the other person, you know, likes you back.
So the shyness between the two of them is to die for. It makes them have a sexual chemistry onscreen that is real-er than anything I’ve seen in a long time.
I Could Never Be Your Woman is great (although – ick – horrible title). Yeah … I think maybe some directors want to re-invent the wheel or whatever the hell they’re focused on. These ladies are focused on the stories they want to tell. I’m so glad they’ve been around for the majority of my film-going life. I just wish they made more movies!
Yes but at least they are making movies! I imagine it’s hard to sell these to producers…..no car chases, nothing gets blown up, no aliens, not even a murder or two? Just people behaving like people? Who wants to see that?
Well I certainly do. These sorts of films are so rare that its a treat when they roll around.
Check out Walking and Talking again if you need a fix. Turned me onto Keener in a big way, I think she’s great.
// Just people behaving like people? Who wants to see that? //
Ha. I know. And you’re right – they’re still making movies! Cause to celebrate!
Keener is great. She has one line in Enough Said that is not supposed to be a joke (not an obvious one) but it got a huge laugh: “Before you go, you want some chervil?”
hahaha.
right?? hahaha
and to your other comment: I am sure that many people were there at the theatre to get another glimpse of Gandolfini. But that can’t be the only reason. I think a hunger for these types of films exists in our culture and it was so great to see it on a sold-out opening night.
Agreed that there is a demand for these films, hopefully we will see more of them. It just seems that most movies have so little respect for the audience, like we all have A.D.D. and if they don’t make fast cuts or blow something up we will lose interest.
Ebert used to say there was nothing more boring to him in a movie then a car chase, I get his point.
Yeah, definitely. Enough already!
Saw this over the weekend, 9 months late as usual as the films I want to see take that long to get to cable. Just a wonderful film!
They were both great in the leads. Gandolfini especially impressed me. As I mentioned above, it’s very hard for an actor to seperate himself from a character as iconic as Tony Soprano. In this movie I believed every second of his performance, and never saw “Tony”.
“Also, I think it was in Dana Stevens’ review … she makes the point that so much of falling in love has to do with ‘being funny’ for the other person. You know, trying out your jokes – making someone laugh … So often movies just flat out do not deal with this important real-life aspect of romance”
The movie just NAILED this. I even think at one point he says to her, as they are settling into the relationship, “you know, I’m getting a little tired of trying to be so funny, can we stop?” and she is like “Yes, sure, lets”. I may not have this quite right, but I think so. Even the scene where they meet, and agree that it’s a “homely crowd”, is sharp in the way these people use humor as a defense mechanism.
“Before you go, you want some chervil?” ….was even funnier when you see Eva walking away with a handful of it, then googling it when she gets home.
Airport scene killer, yes. Eva and the daughter and seemed to be growing apart a bit, but in this one scene you see YEARS of their relationship, how deep the love runs. The actress playing the daughter sure made the most of her screen time.
GREAT last lines of the movie. Paul Newman used to say that the last minutes of a film are the most important. This was just PERFECT:
Albert: “You know, I got the end tables.”
Eva: “Really!? Really!?”
Albert: “No”.
Either accept who is is or don’t Eva, the choice is yours.
Movies like this are just so refreshing, they are like a tonic against all the mindlessness.
Todd – Oh, I’m so glad you saw it! You make me want to see it again!
// I even think at one point he says to her, as they are settling into the relationship, “you know, I’m getting a little tired of trying to be so funny, can we stop?” and she is like “Yes, sure, lets”. I may not have this quite right, but I think so. Even the scene where they meet, and agree that it’s a “homely crowd”, is sharp in the way these people use humor as a defense mechanism. //
Yes!!
it so “gets” that we are “on” when we first go on a date with someone – the whole thing where he pretends that he won’t pay for the ice cream, and she fumbles for her purse, and finally he’s like, “No, I’m kidding …” And her reaction to that. It’s a trust-building thing, moments like that … especially for people who have some miles on them, like these two do … moments of humor lighten the mood and also say: “Here I am, being My Best Self. Do you like it?”
But then, yes, how perfect to finally be like: “Can we please stop with all that now? Am I allowed to relax?”
So subtle, but so TRUE. So many romance films miss that dynamic, don’t take the time to set it up – and yet it’s something most people experience!
And Gandolfini saying, flat out, “You broke my heart.”
I mean, come on.
I miss him so much.
I miss him too. After the deaths of Roger Ebert, James Gandolfini, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, I feel like something essential has been lost, that the soul of cinema has been taken from us. People with such tremendous passion, care, and thoughtfulness in their work. Just a really sad stretch.