What if your whole life were a lie?
Not in the literal sense. Not in a “Truman Show,” free will is a farce, sort of way. Just in a small, less consequential – but maybe equally existential – type of way.
In “You Hurt My Feelings,” Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) descends on a downward spiral when she overhears her husband, Don (Tobias Menzies) talking about her with a friend. Up until this moment, Beth, a writer, and Don, a therapist, have a seemingly perfect marriage. They’re loving, if a little overly co-dependent. They spend nearly every waking moment together and they share everything – from opinions, to first drafts, to sandwiches, the latter of which much to the chagrin of their college-age son Elliot (Owen Teague). But what Beth overhears Don say on that fateful day rips the ground out from under her feet. Beth overhears Don share with his friend that – despite what he’s been telling Beth as he looks over draft after draft – he doesn’t like her latest book.
I know what you’re probably thinking. In fact, an older couple exiting the theater a few feet ahead of me said the same thing: “Well, if that’s the worst problem they’ve ever had in their marriage, they’re doing pretty well.” That couple is 100% correct – although the writer in me tenses up at the prospect of this sort of thing ever happening in my real life. But, in the grand scheme of things, the stakes of this little, well-intentioned white lie are incredibly low. But writer and director Nicole Holofcener excels at the moments in between overreaction and devastation, finding the silliness and the sting in both. “You Hurt My Feelings” raises the issue of the little white lies we tell and why to a cinematic scale, handling small, everyday dramas with a healthy dose of humor and wit.
To help her find those moments, Holofcener employs a cast of actors who handle her sharp writing with ease, equally as adept at making mountains out of molehills as they are at convincing us of the weight this type of revelation could carry. Don’s thoughts about the quality of Beth’s new book spur not just a shift in their relationship, but a shift in the film as well. Moments between Don and Beth from before that seemed charming are suddenly shifted through a different, slightly more cringe-inducing lens, and even ostensible facts that we took for granted are turned on their head.
The movie changes perspective alongside the characters, and both Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies are up to the challenge. Menzies, who is so very often playing the worst person you’ve ever met in things like “The Crown” and “Outlander,” is given the chance to show how easily affable he can be, with a bit of a weary charm thrown in for good measure. But when the truth comes out, his propensity for playing the Prince Philips of the world comes in handy in tandem with the shift in Beth’s perspective. As she begins to descend deeper into self doubt, Don’s unconditionally supportive comments, delivered with such sincerity, take on a new grating quality as we view them through Beth’s eyes.
On its surface, “You Hurt My Feelings” is a clever take on the biggest shakeup in one couple’s marriage. But what takes the film from good to great is how Holofcener ties one small instance into a larger meditation on the lies we tell others and ourselves. When your worldview shifts, no matter how small the shift may be, it forces you to confront other aspects of your life. The characters in “You Hurt My Feelings” have been so intent on avoiding doing just that, they’ve inadvertently put blinders on. When the truth comes out, the blinders come off, both for the characters and for the audience. Beth starts noticing things she never has before. While she thought (and we along with her) that the students in her writing class chose her as their teacher because they liked her previous book, it turns out none of them have ever even picked it up. Her relationship with her son, characterized by her staunch belief that he will be a great writer despite having never read anything he’s written, suddenly comes into clear view as well. How is her unwavering support for her child different from what Don has been doing with her?
This little white lie forces not just Beth to consider herself and her life, but Don as well. Don’s feeble attempts at giving his exasperated clients any therapeutic advice form some of the funniest scenes in the film, but they also help put into context his decision to lie to Beth in the first place. He’s in just as much of a rut as she is, but the only people with the power to evaluate his work and tell him he’s doing a good job are his clients – most of whom are none too happy with him. In one particularly humorous moment, he drops all pretenses and tells a married couple who clearly hate each other that they should just get divorced. It goes just about as well as you’d expect, and complicates the question of when it’s best to lie, and when it’s best to tell the truth.
Holofcener’s screenplay doesn’t leave us with clear answers on the issue of the little white lie because it’s clever enough to realize there are none. Would things have been better if Don had been honest about his feelings in the first place? Probably not. Trust would still be slightly broken, and feelings would still be hurt. But I think that’s a little bit what Holofcener is trying to get at. There are no easy answers to these questions, and the best we can do is muddle our way through them and learn as we go.