BEFORE: This is Mother's Day film #2 of 3, and the same actress who played the mother in yesterday's film, Brenda Blethyn, carries over from "Secrets & Lies" to play the mother in THIS film. Got it? This film had been kicking around my romance list for a while, but since it's essentially about the relationship between a mother and her three daughters, it's been repurposed - even if there's some romance or relationship stuff in here, let's treat this as a Mother's Day film, OK?
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Walking and Talking" (Movie #4,034)
THE PLOT: Self-esteem and insecurity are at the heart of this comedy about the relationship between a mother and her three confused daughters.
AFTER: This is a follow-up to "Walking and Talking" because it was made by the same director, five years later, and also Catherine Keener is in both films. Nicole Holofcener is the director of both of those films, and I just re-read my review of her 1996 film, in which I declared that there wasn't much THERE there, and that's why I didn't remember much about maybe watching that film before, way back in 1997. It didn't register then, and it didn't really register with me in February 2022, either. Now here's another film by the same director, and there's the same problem - what the HELL is this movie about, in the end? A whole lot of nothing happens, so it makes me wonder how much nothing can happen in a movie before it counts as something? Does it ever count as something?
My verdict is "NO", because the narrative rules just weren't followed in either film - movies work better when they have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and in both cases we the audience are just dropped into the main characters' lives for a particular period of time, stuff happens, people get together, people break up, people get sick, people yell at each other, people go to parties, people go swimming, and there's just no freakin' POINT to it all, nobody learns anything or becomes a better person, there's no punchline, no resolution, I'd say this was perhaps a very early example of mumblecore based on how rambling it all is, but to confirm that, I'd really have to understand what mumblecore means, and I don't think anybody really does, it's kind of like "woke" or "boho chic" or "hygge" - you kind of know it when you feel it, but you can't really pin it down.
I had to cheat and look at the synopsis on Wikipedia to see what the point was here - all of the women allow their personal insecurities to affect their lives. Mother Jane wants to look younger and thinner, and so decides to get liposuction, or maybe she does this just so she can flirt with the doctor, it's tough to say. (Honey, he's seen thousands of women naked, he probably doesn't even notice any more.). Oldest daughter Michelle, after years of failing to sell any of her arts and crafts, she takes a job in a one-hour photo store, then has a fling with her high-school age boss.
Might as well, since her husband's already having an affair with her best friend. Middle daughter Elizabeth is an actress, who finally got a small role in a film that's about to be released, but also breaks up with her boyfriend because he doesn't understand the anxieties of being judged on her personal appearances, then she hooks up with an actor who's more eager to critique her looks. Yeah, that'll fix those self-esteem issues. Also, she keeps bringing home stray dogs without realizing she's basically stealing them from their own yards.
Finally, there's adopted daughter Annie, who's African-American and the daughter of a crack addict, and she has trouble fitting in, and trouble with her weight, and issues over race arise when she decides she wants to get her hair straightened. Well, having a white adopted mother and two white adopted sisters might not be the best thing for Annie, not unless she really wants to grow up with as many issues as they have, if not more. Can you tell me for sure that she wasn't better off being raised by a drug addict?
This one hits hard for me, though, because the mother has complications after her liposuction surgery, and spends the second half of the film in the hospital. My own mother got admitted to the hospital yesterday, for the same issue she had six months ago, and six months before that, and six months before that. She's got a heart condition and fluid builds up around her heart, so this happened last Thanksgiving, she started swelling up and had to go to the hospital, they need to reduce the fluid build-up, and what usually goes along with this are fatigue, swelling in the extremities and a rapid heartbeat. These are the signs of congestive heart failure, so this is why she's in an assisted living facility, her heartbeat and these other symptoms need to be monitored every day, and every six months it's back into the hospital, then rehab for a few weeks before she's able to go back to her apartment. And yeah, one of these trips to the hospital is bound to be the last time, but when that will be, who can say?
Anyway, my point about this film is that all these random happenings in the lives of these women just isn't enough for me, I've got to feel afterwards that we all LEARNED something as humans, is that too much to ask? What does this all add up to, in the end? What's it all about, what does it mean? Women are insecure, women are self-sabotaging, women are desperate for love and acceptance, whether that's from men or film critics or stray dogs. Is that the point? Why can't women feel secure and confident and be enough for themselves? I don't know the answer here. But hey, Happy Mother's Day, we salute all of the biological mothers and the adoptive mothers and the neurotic mothers and the non-mothers with pets.
Also starring Catherine Keener (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Emily Mortimer (last seen in "Scream 3"), Raven Goodwin (last seen in "Snatched"), Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "The Guilty"), Michael Nouri (last seen in "The Proposal"), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (last seen in "King Richard"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "The Mountain Between Us"), James LeGros (last seen in "Drugstore Cowboy"), Clark Gregg (last seen in "Trust Me"), Spencer Garrett (last seen in "Blonde"), Dreya Weber (last seen in "This Is It"), Romy Rosemont (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Ashlynn Rose, Christine Mourad (last seen in "Friends with Money"), Mariah O'Brien, Jeanne McCarthy, Evan Mirand, Ivy Strohmaier (last seen in "Enough Said"), Branden Williams (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Nate Richert, Lee Garlington (last seen in "The Little Things"), Greer Goodman, Elayn J. Taylor (last seen in "Something's Gotta Give").
RATING: 4 out of 10 chicken nuggets
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