Enough Said (2013)

An ensemble movie consisting of a divorced couple with a self obsessed daughter, a divorcee who has a confident and uncomplicated approach to life whose daughter is living with her and preparing to leave home for college. There is also a couple, friends of the divorcee, one who is a psycho therapist, who are having a conflict with their employee, a Spanish maid, who they cannot tolerate for her strange habit of replacing strange objects in the wrong place.

The story relates to the divorcee, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a self employed masseuse who visits her clients, carrying a portable massage bed, in their own homes. She is also caring for her daughter who is in the throes of letting go and moving on to college in another place. The daughter also has a friend who seeks to make a friend of her mother. In the process of making that friendship, given advice that her friends mother should not really have been giving and also giving space and hope for her own independence which also she should not really have been giving. The divorcee’s daughter is able to put this to her mother very effectively at the end of the film. But I digress. At a party, our divorcee meets a woman who engages her for a home visit massage. At the same party she also meets a man who obviously takes a shine to her. She is totally unaware that this man is divorced from the woman who has just engaged her for a home visit. Through a friend, the divorced man, who is played by the late excellent James Gandolfini, arranges a date. They slowly hit it off. Later in the story the divorcee discovers from the woman at the party, who she is now visiting regularly and becoming friends with, in a roundabout way that the man the divorcee is dating is this woman’s ex-husband.

Are you still with me ? Don’t worry. It is not a complicated story or film to watch and follow. But just try explaining it to your friend. Which is why many reviewers who have written about this film, have been challenged to sell this film to its wider audience. There is only one spoiler which isn’t spoiling the film – that is discovering that the man you are dating was once married to the woman that you are offering a massage service to and who has been confiding in you her dislikes of his personality and the things that she was irritated by.

How do you let on ? Why don’t you let on. This is not completely explored but it is the impact of not doing so that is the crux of the story. Louis-Dreyfus misses her opportunity and at a dinner party she even tests out the personality traits that so detest Gandolfini’s ex-wife. She does this in a heartbreakingly unkind way.

It is the relationship between Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini that dominates the story. It has some haunting one liners. After falling out Louis- Dreyfus goes round to try and salvage the friendship, to be rebuffed – “You broke my heart, and I’m too old for that now.”

Dreyfus’s daughter, played by Tracey Fairaway, emphasises the need to be owned and loved. When she leaves at the airport to go to to college, both Dreyfus and her ex-husband are there to send her off and they are together on their way out, arms around one another – “We made a really good person there”.

The film plays out with Dreyfus and Ganolfini willing their relationship to get back on track and we are left with an optimistic hop at the end.

It is a humorous, not funny, film with characters that are well cast. They gel so well that you can imagine that it might have fun to have been on set with them. The story is authentic and believable and draws you into the relationships and willing the characters to get it sorted Which they sort of do.

Goodness knows what the Americans think of us in the UK. At one point, after dropping her daughter off at school, Dreyfus shouts at another student to pick her litter up. “Pick your rubbish up, your’e not British.!”