Its “female Woody Allen” critical trappings notwithstanding, the well-written Enough Said leans heavily on the bulk-sized talents of the late James Gandolfini. He’s the very oxygen of this film, whose timbre and wit surpass the previous, not inconsiderable, films of Nicole Holofcener.
Bittersweet is the realzation that two of Gandolfini’s final film characters envelop a tenacity of resistance to moderation. Both the hitman with unquenchable appetites in Killing The Softly and Gandolfini’s character Albert in this film resist the urge for good health . In Killing Them Softly that’s putting it mildly. In Enough Said, Albert’s more subtle, prideful independence of spirit still haunts this fan of a wonderful actor. Given press accounts that his fatal heart attack in Rome earlier this year may have struck after a binge-like feast, it makes Enough Said a little tough to watch when he tells co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus he’s not about to start counting calories.
Have no fear. Enough Said is more than able to withstand any such misgivings. A portrayal of vulnerability and acceptance and their mutual collision courses, its juxtapositions of the comic and the poignant are often riveting.
Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) is a single mother and masseuse, who is one part bumbling schlep, and one part resilient if insecure optimist. She trudges toward a relationship with a similarly single-parenting Albert, who has a huge waistline and a bigger heart. Their daughters are even both imminently heading off to college. Where Eva wavers is in her inherent mistrust of a new relationship eventually turning as sour as her previous one. So she goes for a short-cut from hell. Her unwitting Faust here is none other than Holofcener regular Catherine Keener as a masseuse client who Eva eventually learns just so happens to be Albert’s ex-wife. Marianne (Keener), a poet who knows Joni Mitchell, bitches and moans about Albert’s shortcomings. These digs take on a double-edged sword for Eva. On one level she wants to leave it alone and run for the hills. But on another, more primal one, she’s fascinated with the information she can now cull–a “Travel Advisor” she calls it.
What could have in the wrong hands turned into one of the stupidest endings in romantic comedy history, resonates here, sturdy and goose-bumpy. And sure enough, it’s Gandolfini who seems to make it happen–a magician of casualness and sincerity. Inhabited by characters who feel like real people, one subplot involves the acceptance of the shortcomings of the maid of Eva’s friend, Sarah (Toni Colette). Eva’s vulnerability is reinforced in another subplot where she gets a little too emotionally close to her daughter’s needy best friend. Proving a movie is as good as its minor characters, Tracey Fairaway is perfect as Eva’s daughter Ellen, an aloof cum needy paradox.
There’s an economy of dialogue as a wealth of situations weave tighter Holofcener’s theme of imperfect people feeling their way around new territory. When Eva sits down with her ex-husband and his new wife at a group dinner you can cut with a knife the tension in the air. When she first encounters Albert, she feels as if they’re old friends already. While two stars of two of the most popular televison shows of all time take us through what for them is also new turf as actors, Holofcener seems to say that we always hurt the ones we love. It’s what we do next that counts.