Review: 'You Hurt My Feelings' is a smart, funny look at uncomfortable truths and comforting lies

Microaggressions take on macro scale in writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s latest comedy of manners, “You Hurt My Feelings,” which examines what honesty can do to family cohesion.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who worked with Holofcener 10 years ago in “Enough Said,” plays Beth Mitchell, a New York author who’s working on her next book, a novel that’s a follow-up to her somewhat successful memoir. Beth’s husband, Don (Tobias Menzies), is a therapist who’s feeling like he isn’t being much help to his patients — like the one guy (Zach Cherry) who mutters insults at Don at the end of their session, or the bickering married couple (played by real-life marrieds Amber Tamblyn and David Cross) who think they’re not getting their money’s worth from their couch time.

They’re not the only ones having career doubts. Beth’s no-nonsense sister, Sarah (Michaela Watkins), is married to Mark (Arian Moayed), an actor who’s insecure about his talent or prospects. Then there’s Beth and Don’s adult son, Eliot (Owen Teague), who’s been writing his first play seemingly forever.

The happy vibe of the Mitchell family hits a snag one day, when Beth and Sarah see Don and Mark out shopping — but before they can say hello, Beth overhears Don admitting that he doesn’t think her new book is very good. 

Everything that follows is an acidly funny look at the Mitchells’ now fractured family dynamic, as Beth wonders if she can trust Don — and Don asks himself if a supportive lie is a more loving gesture than a truthful critique.

Every actor is on their game here. Menzies (who played a youngish Prince Philip on “The Crown”) holds a hangdog expression that conveys the weight of his self-doubt about his abilities as a therapist and a husband. Watkins, who has quietly amassed a string of sterling supporting performances, is a bracing dose of reality to counter Beth’s self-absorption. And Louis-Dreyfus, as always, beautifully captures an intellectual woman of a certain age confronted with life as it is and life as she might want it to be.

“You Hurt My Feelings” goes deeper than its whining title suggests. In Holofcener’s witty, funny, thoughtful movie, words can cut, words can wound, and words can be instruments of love.

——

‘You Hurt My Feelings’

★★★★

Opens Friday, May 26, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for language. Running time: 93 minutes.