老友有钱 Friends with Money review by PAM GRADY 英文影评

老友有钱，Friends with Money

Nicole Holofcener, who previously made Walking & Talking and Lovely & Amazing, finally loses the ampersand with Friends With Money, but she has not lost her interest in the lives of women. This time out it's three married friends in their 40s and their younger single pal, four Angelenos who live in a West Side neighborhood where the only people of color ever apparently seen are the hired help. This is the land of the rich, bored, and self-absorbed. It is a finely etched comedy-drama about people one wouldn't want to be stuck in an elevator with for three minutes, let alone in a movie theater for 88.

 

Franny (Joan Cusack), the truly wealthy one in the group, has the happiest marriage; only minor arguments roil her union with Matt (Greg Germann). Clothes designer Jane (Frances McDormand) is also reasonably satisfied by her husband, Aaron (Simon McBurney), even if he is a fashion-obsessed, Brit metroual that people assume is gay. But Jane is undergoing the most intense midlife crisis of the group, to the point where she refuses to wash her hair, and her behavior toward waiters and cashiers is somewhere past rude. The shakiest marriage belongs to Christine (the always excellent Catherine Keener), whose spouse, David (Jason Isaacs), is also her screenwriting partner. They don't so much collaborate with one another as bicker. They are also remodeling their house, which is only creating more tension.
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But when these women feel bad they only need look at their friend Olivia's (Jennifer Aniston) sorry excuse for a life to feel better. She used to be a school teacher, but she is done with that and is now in a holding pattern, working as a maid, smoking way too much pot, and semi-stalking a married ex-boyfriend. When Franny sets her up with Mike (Scott Caan), a personal trainer, it's evident from that first blind date that he is a pig, but Olivia's self-esteem is so low that she continues to see him. Franny wonders at one point if she even would have been friends with Olivia at all if they had met later in life, but the answer is "probably"; and the same holds true for the other women. Even their failures look like successes compared to Olivia's mean existence, which makes her a very useful yardstick, if nothing else.

 

That class issue might mean something if any of these navel-gazing ladies were worth caring about, but that's not the case. These are normally very likeable actresses, but even they cannot create much empathy for a group of women whose friendship seems to be a matter of habit. Do any of them even like each other? That much is never really clear. Holofcener has a definite flair for character and dialogue. The problem is these characters are not exactly empathetic. The well-off ones are smug, while Olivia is simply an enigma: Why does she think so little of herself? But the women are better off than the men, all of who come across simply as types rather than people.

 

Friends With Money is very well-done. It's just a pity it doesn't revolve around more likeable people. As is, it's just painful.

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