 |
|
|
|
Friends With Money
Extending her cinematic treatise on the pratfalls of female friendship, Holofcener in Friends with Money adds the divider of class to her previously explored (i.e., barely grazed) antagonisms of intervening relationships ( Walking and Talking) and body image ( Lovely and Amazing) . Screenwriter Christine (Keener), dress-designer Jane (Frances McDormand) and independently wealthy Franny (Joan Cusack) are the friends of the title, each quite a bit more accomplished, a whole lot richer, substantially more married, and a good deal more parental (at least on paper) than "friend" in the center (the allusion entirely intended), Olivia (Jennifer Aniston)-a pot-smoking maid who sleeps with the wrong men and trolls department store counters for sample creams and lotions. They are all also each about a decade older than Olivia, a potentially relevant, if altogether unacknowledged, piece of data. It is not clear how these women ever became friends-with each other or with Olivia. It is even less clear how they can remain so.
Reportedly witty and sophisticated, Friends with Money is instead simply bitter and tired. The women snipe at each other and about each other, pout and mope, nag and bark, and let their hair go unwashed for inexcusably long periods for no reason that anyone can think of. (Who says misogyny is the exclusive domain of the manly?). In the meantime, their husbands-to whom they are almost universally unfair-give in to their whims, massage their feet, and try to understand their mood swings. (To be fair, one husband is a bit over-concerned about fashion, another a spendthrift, and the third does comment that his size 2 wife is eating badly and putting on a touch of weight-though the latter part only upon provocation, so in L.A. terms, monstrous they may well be . . . ).
Some critics seem persuaded of greater depth in Holofcener's work (the L.A. Times points to Jane Austen; Salon makes comparisons to Chekhov and Bergman; lord help us) by the passing references in the dialogue. The women in Friends with Money moan through questions of mortality (they are in their 40s after all), materialism (a college freshman-level summation of the charity circuit), self-doubt (a turn of face on home improvement), intimacy (though we need to be told repeatedly if a couple is not sleeping together), pity (or rather, superiority masking itself as disdain for other)-but what comes across most assuredly in this shrillest of works is an overwhelming sense of entitlement. From the wealthiest, most happily married Franny, all the way down market to Olivia, they each believe they have a right to claim a right beyond, and to take it if it is not freely given (this is no commentary on wealth; Olivia is exceedingly gifted in this regard). Giving does not come quite as naturally. Beyond the film's obvious riffing on the careless charity of the rich, they are each deluded into believing on a far more emotional scale that their offhanded gestures will pass for actual generosity: a goodness they lack one and all.
Incisive, this is not, I daresay. Nor is it portrait, satirical or other, of a certain class of women in L.A. or elsewhere. This is merely a venomous pamphlet of protest against . . . privilege? . . . that in the same breath seeks it out. A poison pen letter more steeped in envy than in insight. Like the L.A. of last year's Crash, the L.A. of Friends with Money is a self-contained fantasy land built from manufactured conscience (it reeks of false sentiment). My theatrical confreres ( consoeurs) notwithstanding, it isn't just that the film turns out to be nothing, or that it's stupid. It's that it thinks itself something; and it thinks itself wise. Small though it is, Friends with Money is not an unambitious film; it is simply an unsuccessful one. ©2006 Shari L. Rosenblum |
Friends with Money , the indie-circuit darling of the moment, is precisely the sort of observational comedy in which Nicole Holofcener, its director, has excelled: vapid and superficial, mistaking sharp tongue for keen eye, and insufferably whiny (a trait I'm beginning to associate with Holofcener-A-lister, Catherine Keener, whose voice I can barely recall in any other octave). It wants to be-claims to be-a comedy of manners with dark interiors, but it manages only a dose of smart-alecky cynicism and a dash of braying mean spirits. A mere 88 minutes from start to end, the film feels vastly overlong for its contents, even with the aesthetic and thematic ugliness that pervades its very core. "Och, that was nothing," said the woman beside me to her companion as the credits began to roll. "Yih, we knew it would be nothing," came the response, "but it was just so stupid [extended emphasis on the "stu"]." I felt they were being kind. 
I must confess that there is a sort of faux breeziness to the film as it unfolds, easing us in to its existential void. Holofcener writes and directs with a casual been-there-done-that air, throwing off distasteful epithets with a brisk self-composure, a personality of poise somehow sallying across the screen with dizzying nonchalance (director of quite a few episodes of Sex and the City, she seems to have drunk of its kool-aid). Like that erstwhile HBO series, or the earnest member of the most "in" high school clique who plays nice with the wannabes, her films make us want to like them because they reach out to us in some semblance of identification. She infuses her texts with a supercilious cool-a plausibly deniable self-impressedness-that we are lured into believing is our own. With barebones wit and snarky bite, she invites us to embrace our bitch within. But do not be duped. As she proceeds from bitching with us (for us) to carping at us for the rest of her film's running time, the trance snaps and raps us hard in our private parts (the disdain for which in the vibrator sequences is perhaps unintended). What we're left with is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. 
Despite the claims in the press, not a minute of this feels real. While the acting cannot be faulted for the film's failed sensibilities-nor should it be too greatly praised. There are good actresses turning in performances that vary little from what they've given before-Aniston is weakest; she's got barely three expressions, but Cusack, Keener and McDormand each play the role expected of them with just enough of their usual panache. And there are decent actors given little to do-Jason Isaacs is perhaps too good (a twist in itself) to be the bad guy the film imagines him, but it's the writing that makes him so, Greg Germann barely gets the chance to give his character the lifted eyebrow of his trademark mockery, and Scott Caan is asked to play nothing more than caddish clown as single-cell organism. Simon McBurney has received great praise as the suspectedly gay husband of the frequently mannish McDormand, but the gayness angle is a bit overwritten and overplayed for the acting to even touch on subtle strategy. Finally, there is nothing believable about Ben Stephenson's character or its evolution, other than the filmmaker's self-congratulatory sense of aesthetic topsy-turvy. Asked to play a single note, the actor responds with mere adequacy. I'd have liked to see him rise above. 