Not often that a title so denies the thrust of a film. In this film’s therapy-speak, accusing someone of hurting your feelings evades the reality: You choose to feel hurt. Partners in a successful relationship will assume responsibility for their own responses instead of blaming the other.
That’s the point of all the family tensions here. The compulsion to be candid is embodied in Beth’s title of her memoir: I Had to Tell It. She felt the compulsion to reveal her parents’ cruel lack of respect of her. “Shit for brains” was one of her daddy’s sobriquets for her. Her candid memoir enabled her escape from the diminution it made her feel.
In her creative writing class Beth is properly over-enthusiastic about her students’ attempts. But she’s surprised and hurt that none have read or even heard of her book. They dutifully promise to correct that, but any insult is hers to take not what they gave.
Her response to her own son is diametrically opposed to her father’s but equally problematic. In over-praising his potential and accomplishments she undermines his self-acceptance as much as her father did hers.
Beth’s key “betrayal” now is her husband Don’s praise of her new book, a novel. When she overhears his admission that he doesn’t like the book she feels he has been lying to her.
But the husband’s defence is solid. He wanted to support her even if the work was not to his taste. The second agent’s sale of the book justifies Don’s support. But Beth is immediately tested again when the blurb on her cover is trumped by a better blurb on the book beside hers. Who says what doesn’t matter as much as how the subject chooses to respond.
When the couple jocularly recall their false appreciation of each other’s gifts they are reminded that a close relationship may often depend upon such small tactful fibs. So, too, instead of declaring how ugly his facial surgery has left him Beth assures him he will look good when it heals.
The film closes on a perfect shot. The couple is together in bed again, starting to read their respective copies of their son’s first play. We don’t know how good/bad it will be or how supportive/candid they will be in response. But now they know the balance that’s required and the understanding on both sides.
In a minor replay of the theme, when Beth’s sister’s boyfriend is fired from his play he resolves to retire from acting. Instead he apparently auditioned for another and enjoys success. Again, the firing isn’t as significant as how he chooses to respond to it. As the bard put it, Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.
Don’s counselling sessions work the same theme. Though he feels he is losing his skill and memory, the point again is that the responsibility to work lies with the client not the therapist. The longterm client who can’t afford him anymore attests to Don’s efficacy.
When the mutually hateful couple demand their $33,000 refund they indignantly reject his advice they separate. Their shared rejection of him saves their marriage when his patiently hearing them didn’t. What he says or doesn’t say is not as important as what they work out.
Perhaps the domestic theme’s clearest exercise is in sister Sarah’s interior design work. When she goes by her own taste her proposed lighting fixtures leave her apparently sophisticated client cold. But her desperate offer of a phallic grotesquerie works immediately. Here as in the psychological issues we can nurse our own abused feelings or try to understand the offending other’s.
I don’t know writer/director Nicole Holofcener’s work. After this extraordinarily fresh, sensitive, witty intro I must watch for her more.
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