Enough Said - film review

In this touching and ludicrous romcom Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Eve, a divorced single mother who meets barrel-shaped Albert (James Gandolfini), also divorced, and, making each other laugh, they begin to date
18 October 2013

We watch films starring dead actors all the time without a second thought. It’s not possible to do that, though, with this lovely, funny romcom, Enough Said. This isn’t James Gandolfini’s last film but it was filmed not long before he died of a heart attack, aged 51, in June – and it’s impossible not to think of that, because, charismatic though he may be, he looks not only quite upsettingly overweight but altogether much older than he should, and this damage is worked into his part in the movie.

Eve (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Elaine in Seinfeld, very funny) is a divorced single mother working as a perfectly proper masseuse in the paradise suburbs of California. At a party, Eve meets barrel-shaped Albert (Gandolfini), also divorced, and, making each other laugh, they begin to date.

But at the same party Eve also meets Marianne (Catherine Keener), a stylish woman who becomes a client and a friend, given to bitching about her ex’s bad habits, obesity and sexual ineptitude. Only when it is too late to own up does Eve realize that it’s Albert who is Marianne’s ex and whom she now trashing like “a human TripAdvisor”.

Enough Said, written and directed by Nicole Holofcene, a fine maker of woman-centred movies, is about a problem that’s common enough among people dating in later life but rarely tackled so well as here: how much do you want to hear about other people rather than decide for yourself? It’s both touching and ludicrous and it shows that we lost in Gandolfini an accomplished comedian we barely knew.

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