Small scope sacrifices impact in 'Friends'

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, April 14, 2006

In her new film, Friends With Money, director Nicole Holofcener (Lovely & Amazing) focuses on women living the good life in Los Angeles. By setting her story in a financially comfortable milieu, Holofcener is able to offer glimpses into lives that don't always seem worth living - not because they're mired in desperation but because they've proceeded pretty much according to plan.

Friends With Money can be viewed as another in a succession of Los Angeles-based movies. If Crash - the most recent and most prominent L.A. foray - went too far over the top, Holofcener's movie may be guilty of traveling too far in the opposite direction.

Holofcener, who also wrote the script, makes little attempt to puncture the insularity of her characters' lives, with either heavy satirical jabbing or flashes of illuminating insight. The result is a comedy that does better in small moments than in overall impact.

Having said that, I'm not at all sure Holofcener could have found a better cast to paint her portrait of these hollow Los Angeles lives.

Jennifer Aniston finds her most agreeable screen role since 2002's The Good Girl. She plays Olivia, a financially strapped woman with a circle of wealthy friends. Olivia quit a teaching job to clean houses. She has a history of relationship problems. She smokes pot. It may be 2006, but she's a kind of latter-day dropout.

The rest of the cast includes Frances McDormand as a clothes designer and the world's most embittered wealthy person; Joan Cusack as the more or less contented wife in the group; and Catherine Keener, as a woman who's beginning to resent her screenplay-writing partner and husband (Jason Isaacs). They're adding a view-blocking second story to their home while trying to get through a screenplay.

Holofcener illuminates these relationships in casually expressed encounters - dinners in restaurants and scenes that focus on each of the women. Points aren't pushed home. Instead, Holofcener allows her characters to go their own ways as they illustrate the movie's theme: These women have acquired the hallmarks of success (both materially and personally), but they're still not happy.

This is true of most of the characters, but McDormand's Jane has turned depression into high and exquisite art. She refuses to wash her hair, because it would only get dirty again. She has lost any semblance of patience. She can barely function in public without getting into an argument.

McDormand jumps into this task with a mixture of sarcasm and venom that's astonishing in its conviction - and also very funny.

The men aren't an especially compelling group. The most interesting husband is Simon McBurney's Aaron, who's married to McDormand's character. The other women in the group think he's gay; he's a little too color- and fashion-conscious. They draw conclusions. They gossip.

At one point, Aaron meets another married man with similar interests. Don't be sure you know where that's headed. Aside from an end-of-picture contrivance, Holofcener skillfully creates the illusion that events are unfolding naturally, unbothered by authorial intent. It's a definite accomplishment but one that also diminishes the movie's bite.

Instead of offering us a slice of life, Holofcener offers many slices, although most are from the same affluent pie. This is a movie in which an argument about SpongeBob masks deep-seated dissatisfactions and in which a remark about a character's weight can emerge as the tip of an iceberg that's about to be struck by a foundering marriage.

Holofcener also has a way with funny scenes that play against an obvious grain. At one point, Scott Caan, who plays a personal trainer, takes Olivia on one of the most misguided first dates in movie history.

Holofcener excels at catching lives at a particular moment, and her movie has a fluid, easy pace. She's less successful at convincing us that we've met up with people whose problems are worth an entire movie or, sometimes, even the parts of the movie each of them gets.