Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Depending on the strength of the microscope our behavior is put under, I suspect we would all look pretty awful. Every flaw, foible and foot in mouth exposed for the world to see. This is why I fail to understand the motivation of those who participate in reality TV. They will inevitably end up looking bad. The viewing audience has grown accustomed to characters, who can be molded, formed into good or bad, depending on the requirements of the story. The good guys don’t have many flaws, or if they do, those flaws are completely charming and lovable. Real people just aren’t like that. So when an actual person turns up on TV, any real flaw automatically makes them into a “bad guy”. They just don’t fit the fictional mold we’ve all come to expect. It is a rare thing for a work of fiction to give us characters that don’t fit the mold, yet that is exactly what Lovely and Amazing does; it gives us people, not pre-fabs. And some of these (no, all of these) people have flaws that are definitely not all charming when put under the microscope.

The story centers on a mother and her daughters. Brenda Blethyn plays the mother to daughters Michelle (Catherine Keener), Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) and adopted (and much younger, and black) daughter Annie (Raven Goodwin). The movie doesn’t have a story arc as much as it is a slice of life, albeit a significant one. What we see is a mother undergoing liposuction (and trying to explain this to her overweight youngest daughter without suggesting that the daughter is not beautiful just the way she is, a difficult if not impossible task). We also have a bitter and mean eldest daughter, Michelle, whose unhappy marriage is shown in a never ending round of arguments. The middle daughter, Elizabeth, is an actress whose insecurity about her appearance is absolutely painful to watch. Annie, the youngest (at age 8, the youngest by about 20 years), is a plainspoken little girl with a traumatic history and a feisty attitude.

These women are examined up and down and sideways, and don’t come out the better for it. Michelle is angry, ill tempered, sarcastic and cruel. Her comments to and about her mother and sisters are generally meant to belittle, and her arguments with her husband make her seem shrewish and unreasonable. Her actions as the film progresses are irresponsible, and are of the kind only undertaken by a woman who is truly and desperately unhappy with herself.

Elizabeth is perpetually looking for validation from her boyfriend (James LeGros) who simply cannot give her what she needs, which is self esteem. When she ends up in bed with an equally appearance obsessed actor, she seems genuinely flummoxed by his questions regarding his looks. In her view, the only person whose appearance needs to be examined is hers, and her insecurity is at once heartbreaking and annoying in its persistence.

Annie is a little girl with a troubled past, none of which is her doing. She has a “Big Sister” as a black role model, but her behavior ends that relationship. We mostly see her being ignored, although she does not tolerate this for long. Michelle has no patience with her (seeing her as her mother’s indulgence to assuage her own loneliness), and Elizabeth loves her, but in her own distracted way. Annie is smart enough to attach only to Mom, who actually loves her and does not see her as a charity project, but as a person to love and raise as her own. Annie’s own insecurities about the color of her skin and the texture of her hair are just beginning to make an appearance.

Mom herself is a bit flighty, but with an absolutely good heart. She loves her girls fiercely, but is not deluded as to their flaws. She sums up her family in one simple declaration. As her doctor (on whom she has quite a crush) examines her, she talks of her worries about who will care for Annie if she herself dies young; “One of my daughters is really f*cked up, and the other one isn’t married”.

The acting in Lovely and Amazing is absolutely outstanding. Each of these characters is played with depth and feeling. And each actress has the courage to play her character, warts and all, without glamorizing their merits, or overplaying their flaws. Catherine Keener as Michelle and Emily Mortimer as Elizabeth are both standouts. Writer/Director Nicole Holofcener took some real chances in letting her characters be so persistently unlovable, and she is amply repaid by these strong performances.

The movie does have a couple of significant flaws. The adult daughters are clearly pretty screwed up. And while we do know that their father left them at an early age, we don’t really get much explanation for the depth of their unhappiness. Mom does not give the impression of a parent who could leave the types of scars these women are sporting, so where did they come from? Is the movie presupposing that women without fathers are inherently this damaged? Are there extenuating circumstances of which we are unaware? Is Mom supposed to come off as that bad? Are they just mean and insecure by nature? We don’t get an answer to this question, which seems a fundamental one in the movie. Perhaps the movie means to imply that they aren’t really any more messed up than anyone else, we’re just getting to see enough of them to recognize flaws we miss in those around us. I don’t know, and having seen the movie, I feel like I should. Lack of history can be charming in slice of life films, but I felt that we needed some more information here.

The other flaw, which I saw as significant, but most probably wouldn’t, is that the score (supervisor Amy Rosen, composer Craig Richey) simply does not fit the movie. The story takes place in an urban Californian setting, yet the score is heavily laden with country western instrumentals. This undercuts the setting and confuses the tone of the entire film. This may be nit-picky, but I think it had a major impact on my enjoyment of the movie. I had a hard time getting lost in these characters, even though they were well drawn and portrayed, and I think it is because the music is simply wrong. It was constantly pulling me away from the story. A score that strikes a discordant note with the nature of the film (yes, pun intended) can easily put off a viewer. Only at the end, over the closing credits, did the music draw on the emotion of the film (the song is “Foreign” by Deb Talan – it had a perfect feel).

Overall, Lovely and Amazing is a well drawn character study of some very unhappy, some neurotic, some lonely and all very real people. Its lack of back-story as to how they got this way and the flawed scoring undercut the power of the story, knocking it down a star, but this is still a good film, with wonderful performances and very well drawn characters. It’s definitely a worthwhile rent.




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD