Lovely & Amazing Review

Nicole Holofcener writes women who say the wrong thing and then keep talking, and this is where that method sits most exposed. Brenda Blethyn's Jane books liposuction she cannot afford. Catherine Keener's Michelle makes tiny craft objects nobody wants and starts sleeping with the teenager who works the photo counter. Emily Mortimer's Elizabeth is an actress who cannot stop asking to be measured, and she gets the scene everyone remembers, standing naked in front of Dermot Mulroney while he tries to be kind about her arms.

It plays for minutes without a cut to relieve anyone. Gyllenhaal, used precisely and barely eighteen, gives Jordan a blank teenage confidence that makes Michelle's interest both plausible and appalling. Raven Goodwin's Annie is the sharpest thing in it, an adopted eight-year-old already fluent in a family language made entirely of self-criticism.

The trouble is the shape. Holofcener sets three threads running and then lets the liposuction story dissolve into complications offscreen, the legal trouble that lands on Michelle is waved away in a single scene, and the last stretch stops rather than closes.