You Hurt My Feelings

A small-scale comedy set in New York. Beth is a writer. Her first book was well received; now she is writing a novel and her husband Don reads every draft and says he likes it. Don is a psychotherapist and does the same in his practice: he listens, he affirms, he tells nobody anything difficult. One day Beth sees him in a shop. He has not noticed her and is talking to a friend: he does not like the book and has not been able to say so for years. That moment is the whole matter. Beth does not know what to do, and the question moves off the book and onto what the marriage rests on. The side lines carry the same question: Beth's sister and brother-in-law hold a similar silence about whether they like their own work. The narrative builds no great crisis. People talk, then talk again, and the matter settles quietly. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Beth and Tobias Menzies plays Don. Michaela Watkins and Jeannie Berlin are in the cast. Nicole Holofcener directed. A fine example for anyone who likes character comedy and films about everyday relationships. For a viewer expecting incident, it is entirely conversation and small in scale.