ENOUGH SAID

Note: My busy holiday schedule has me keeping my word count down for a post or two. If it’s all the same to you folks, I’m going to skip the plot synopsis and go straight to my thoughts. – RM

As I get older, I’m beginning to appreciate seeing different sorts of relationships on-screen. Case-in-point, Albert and Eva (James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Both are over fifty, both have already been married, both have teenaged children, and both are somewhat weary of “the game”. In most other films of this ilk, the actors would be much younger, or come with less baggage, or be actively “looking”. However, there’s an added complexity that comes with having done a lap that pretty/available/less-attached people don’t come from. Prior mistakes have given them a weariness and a hesitancy – something that precludes falling as fully in love as they might have in their younger days. Not that they don’t want to, just that they’ve already seen what happens when they do.

The unfortunate knock against ENOUGH SAID is what happens when Eva starts listening to Albert’s ex-wife, Marianne (Catherine Keener). In learning about Albert’s faults, Eva runs with them. She sees firsthand the peccadilloes that pulled apart his first marriage board-by-board, where over those first few weeks she either didn’t see them or didn’t care. That leads to questions over why Eva would listen to Marianne about Albert in the first place, and why she would take it to heart and ruin something that seemed so promising.

Perhaps she does-so because we all things to heart that we probably shouldn’t. We all wear the criticism that gets flung at us, give too much credence to gossip, and generally have trouble being happy. So while it might seem at first blush that Eva is doing something stupid – or even self-sabotaging – the truth is that she’s doing something ugly that so many of us do. Perhaps writer/director Nicole Holofcener showed us this side of Eva to warn us. Perhaps she believes that we are too quick to believe the negative whispers, and not secure enough to hold on to the truth we see for ourselves.

That truth couldn’t possibly be better personified than what we get from James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Here are two actors who have embodied some of the most iconic characters in television history, and yet those famous personas are nowhere to be seen. Instead what we’re given are very honest portrayals of people we feel like we know. Both of them are comfortable in their own skin, content with the modest successes their lives have brought them, and both still quietly hoping for something more. Both quietly hope to find good partners; both also deeply want to be great parents.

ENOUGH SAID is the sort of film that tends to come-and-go with little fanfare. It isn’t splashy, doesn’t come with pedigree, and doesn’t feel like the sort of movie one seeks out in a theatrical environment. However, to let it pass by unseen would be a missed opportunity. The film is full of warmth, humour, and tenderness. It wonders aloud how anybody really gets to “start over” anymore when our past is so readily found.

Matineescore: ★ ★ ★ out of ★ ★ ★ ★

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