Enough Said

One of American independent cinema's most astute and candid chroniclers of relationships, Nicole Holofcener possesses a rare facility for conceiving flawed, fully inhabited, and often very funny characters, and for placing them in situations that yield both sharply comic exchanges and abiding emotional truths.

Her gifts are on full display in her latest feature, the charming, richly nuanced, and refreshingly mature romance Enough Said. Here Holofcener continues her perennial collaboration with Catherine Keener, as well as enlisting two of television's most iconic talents in Julia Louis-Dreyfus and, in one of his final screen appearances, the late James Gandolfini.

In a typically delightful role, Louis- Dreyfus plays Eva, a divorced soon-to-be empty nester who makes her living as a massage therapist. One night at a party, she meets the sweetly affable Albert (Gandolfini), a television archivist with a college-bound daughter of his own. After a promising first date, the two pursue a tender courtship. But while Albert is warm and witty, Eva remains wary; the baggage of her failed marriage impedes her from full commitment. And so too does her growing friendship with fellow divorcée Marianne (Keener), who seems quite comfortable in her bitterness.

Discovering how Holofcener resolves this fraught scenario is one of the deeper pleasures of Enough Said. That this resolution feels so truthful speaks to her uncompromising devotion to her characters and their thorny emotional lives — and to her cast's equal determination to bring honest, messy details to their performances. Cast against type, Gandolfini is especially marvelous here, providing a poignant reminder of the loss his premature passing represents.

Jane Schoettle