Nicole Holofcener on the Thorny Family Dynamics at the Center of ‘You Hurt My Feelings’

Aside from her own creative quandary, Beth is met with a similar dilemma when her son, Eliot (Owen Teague), reveals that he’s working on a play. Beth is unwaveringly supportive of Eliot, despite not having read a word of his, in an attempt to give him the kind of reassurance that she herself never received as a child. “I think a lot of mothers fear so much that their kids are going to grow up the way they did, or with the same critical voice in their head that they did, so they overcompensate and tell their kids they’re fantastic at every moment,” Holofcener says. “I like to make fun of that.” 

This relationship is inspired by Holofcener’s real-life experience of motherhood. When it comes to her 25-year-old twin sons—one an aspiring filmmaker, the other a music journalist—“I will give honest feedback if they want it,” she says. “We’re very close and my opinion is important to them. I am very supportive, mostly because I like what they do. Thank God.” But unlike her avatar in the film, Holofcener isn’t afraid to hold back. “Unconditional support has its costs because if everything is fantastic, how do you know what is and what isn’t?” That’s the issue at the heart of the relationship between Beth and Eliot onscreen. “She wanted to make sure her child never felt criticized. That’s just fantasyland.”

The struggles and pitfalls of motherhood have formed the basis of some of Holofcener’s best movies. She broadly wrote about her adopted brother in Lovely & Amazing (2001), where the character of Jane (Brenda Blethyn) adopts a young Black girl after her daughters are already grown. For Enough Said, Holofcener reflected on the process of letting go when kids leave for college. In the film, Eva (Louis-Dreyfus) embarks on a new relationship with Albert (James Gandolfini) as both of their daughters are about to head off to school. Holofcener’s kids hadn’t left home yet at the time, but she was already worried about how bad it would be. The reality of it was so much worse. “It was a big mess. A big, empty-nest mess. I have a wonderful career and a full life, but when they left, it really shook me in terms of my value in the world. I drew my value from being their mom: making them lunch and talking to them every day and taking care of them. It took me a while to remember that I’m a human being, and not just a mom.”

For years, the strength of Holofcener’s films has been rooted in her poignant exploration of all kinds of women and their relationships to one another. Nothing feels too unrealistic: She gives us smart women who self-sabotage, kind mothers with bad instincts, and grandmothers with no filters. When I asked where she draws these relationships from, she says, “They’re the ones I have. And the people I have them with are strong, deep, complicated women.” It’s a ripe world to explore for Holofcener, who prefers the ordinary nature of real relationships to the “ridiculous female friendships” portrayed in some movies. “You don’t really need to drum up a lot of fake stuff to make relationships fascinating.”