Small world

Enough Said

Crit

The vast majority of filmmakers would take this plot--woman unwittingly becomes close friends with her new lover's ex-wife--and turn it into bad-wannabe-Shakespeare-comedy, slap-happy, implausible, with the compulsory moment when you're supposed to believe but really don't that the relationship is in trouble before everyone smiles at the end and even the exes learn something positive about each other.

Of the minority of filmmakers who wouldn't scotch it up that way, the vast majority simply would never go near such a clockwork, hackneyed premise because--hey, look above: what else are you gonna do with it?

Nicole Holofcener is an infinitesimally small minority of filmmakers. First of all, she takes this ridiculous coincidental setup and makes it perfectly plausible, in part because she parcels the discovery out to the audience along with the protagonist rather than making it Ironic. (OK, yeah, anyone who has read anything about the film knows from the start, and some of those who don't will guess, but what I'm talking about is the lack of creaking stage machinery.)

Another thing a lot of people would do with this material is sort of wink at the brutal betrayal of both friend and lover it is once the woman realizes the coincidence but tries to go on as if she didn't know, 'cause hey, this is your romantic lead, and she can't really do anything despicable. But Holofcener makes Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) painfully culpable in her duplicity--and makes her pay, not in a jokey way, but with the genuine devastation of losing a love and knowing she deserved to.

Oh, and meanwhile, while all this mean, horrible stuff is going on, it is one of the funniest films I've seen in a long time--two parts Holofcener's script, one part the comic timing of one recognized and one less-recognized (the late, lovingly lamented James Gandolfini) master of the art. It's impossible not to confront the imprints of these two actors' indelible television roles, unless you're the one person in the English-speaking world who has never seen Seinfeld or The Sopranos. There is, in fact, a lot of Elaine Benes in Eva (and come on: this is exactly the sort of easy-to-not-do-the-right-thing situation Elaine would find herself in), but I noticed only one moment where Tony Soprano seemed about ready to burst through: after a dinner party at which Eva has drunkenly and spitefully baited Albert in front of her friends. As he drives her home, there it is on his face: that Tony anger--careful, woman, you don't know what you're unleashing. But in fact, he has been the victim of brutality, not the perpetrator, and he holds onto the rage so that it can fester.

Trailer

• 12 Years a Slave--Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in a film based on the true story of a free northern black shanghaied by slave chaser; has a chance to be extremely good.