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FRIENDS WITH MONEY
Directed & Written by: Nicole Holofcener.
Produced by: Anthony Bregman.
Director of Photography: Terry Stacey.
Edited by: Robert Frazen.
Music by: Craig Richey & Rickie Lee Jones.
Released by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Country of Origin: USA. 88 min. Rated: R.
With: Catherine Keener, Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, Simon McBurney, Jason Isaacs, Greg Germann & Scott Caan.

Screenwriter Christine (Catherine Keener) adds a second story to her house and criticizes her friends’ love lives so she can ignore her own dilapidated marriage. Her friend Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) is stuck in a string of demeaning, low-paying jobs. She has so little self-esteem that she can’t stop making prank calls to her now-married boyfriend from several years ago, much less form a new relationship. Another in this Los Angeles circle, clothing designer Jane (Frances McDormand), expresses her debilitating depression through fits of anger. And because no group of friends would be complete without one to make the others feel a little bit worse, Franny’s (Joan Cusack) life is perfect.

Obviously, what’s most exciting here is the dream-team of female talent. McDormand displays her versatility once again as the outraged and abrasively unhappy Jane. Cusack, perhaps one of Hollywood’s most underused talents, is a relief as the one character who isn’t crazy. Although Aniston is well-suited to Holofcener’s sensibilities, her acting is almost identical to her work in other independent ventures like Office Space and The Good Girl – winning but a little too underplayed.

It’s refreshing to see Keener, who has headlined all of Holofcener’s films, as clumsy and oversensitive, oblivious to her many problems. And while she brings a lot to her role, you can’t help but wonder if she would have been more convincing playing McDormand’s Jane or Aniston’s Olivia, the type of quippy and angsty roles she’s made a name for herself. But come to think of it, she has played those exact characters before. Olivia is a dead ringer for Keener’s Amelia in Holofcener’s Walking and Talking and Jane is a precise replica of Michelle in Lovely & Amazing. And that brings us to the key problem here. While each new Holofcener feature is better at portraying dissatisfied women than the last, her films deal with the same type of characters facing the same type of problems.

Fortunately, Holofcener introduces male characters as complicated as their female counterparts, but even here there are problems. The most developed of the lot is Aaron (Simon McBurney), Jane’s effeminate husband, but his scenes are mostly meant to drag the viewer through a long guessing game of whether or not his character is gay. And for a film intended to be about friends with money, economic issues do not even appear as a major theme. We do find out that one friend is broke, two are middle class, and one is insanely rich, but besides one inconsequential fight left unresolved, it’s never seriously addressed.

Like Holofcener’s other films, Friends with Money is an amusing, touching, and probing scratch underneath the surface of the female mentality. However, she has acquired a more experienced eye for what works and what doesn't, smoothing out the clunky storylines and awkward dialogue of her previous efforts. Cinematographer Terry Stacey (American Splendor) also helps separate this film from her others by framing Friends with warm, soft lighting in intimate spaces, similar to his recent work in In Her Shoes.
Zachary Jones
April 7, 2006