You Hurt My Feelings

 You Hurt My Feelings

Written, Directed and Produced by: Nicole Holofcener
Distributed by A24.
Premiered at Sundance. 

You Hurt My Feelings, is one of the funniest films I've seen in a long time. Though slightly niche, the premise itself had me laughing. It's about a novelist's long-standing marriage that suddenly turns upside down when she overhears her husband give his honest reaction to her latest book. It’s a simple setup, almost silly—you laugh from a distance, but up close? It’s a knife, cutting into the trust we build our lives on. This film isn’t about the big lies; it’s about the small ones, the ones we tell to keep love soft. The “you’re fine just as you are” kind of honesty, not the “you’ve let yourself go” kind. It wanders between how hard it is to speak those truths and why we need them. There’s a subplot, too, where Beth tells her son he’s wonderful, that Western trick of radical acceptance. He hates it, calls it hollow, and you feel it—the way constant praise can leave you alone with your flaws. The problem with this sort of radical acceptance is that as a community we wouldn't want to even acknowledge them as flaws, leaving people to deal with it by themselves - creating a society of isolated individuals.

The best part about the film is, it comes from a place of having moved past such experiences and hence it takes a lighter note. If the director writes this from a place of deep hurt and betrayal, the film would've been entirely different and it wouldn't let the audience see what it's saying. Films like this show us how comedy can be the chocolate sauce to the broccoli which is the truth. It's a simple film, with a unique idea written and executed beautifully. I laughed out loud, more than once, and walked away hoping we all find someone brave enough to tell us the truth, even when it stings.