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Friday, April 14, 2006
Cutting 'Friends' skewers race, class and income biases
Nicole Holofcener's wittily pungent, class- and status-conscious, girl-centric drama focuses on three married friends, their husbands and their attempt to rally around a school teacher-turned-maid friend.
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View all photosThe friends are Franny (Joan Cusack), who has inherited her family's money and is still in lust with her husband, Matt (Greg Germann); Christine (Catherine Keener), a screenwriter who works with her mate, David (Jason Isaacs), and whose marriage has unraveled under the weight of home renovation; and Jane (Frances McDormand), a designer undergoing a crisis with patient spouse Aaron (Simon McBurney), who everyone thinks is gay.
In the center of the group is Olivia (Jennifer Aniston), an ex-teacher who has taken to cleaning houses to survive and who is cut adrift from her own life. The women cluck and coo around Olivia, who is miserable, single and unsure, goals blurred by the standard her pals have set.
They offer advice, men and everything but financial help but Olivia is lost, sore and more than a little mistrustful after a disastrous fling with a married man.
The film is really a representational slice of life of upscale Los Angeles, complete with its class, race and professional bias, and Holofcener works beautifully to establish a sense of discontent within privilege. As Jane says on her 43rd birthday, "It's like we're just waiting to die."
Holofcener also does a good job creating the little routine fissons that threaten to tear marriages and friendships apart, juggling acerbic bitchery with some very amusing scenes that question just what makes a good partner in life, whether it be husband or best friend.
The actresses work well together, sharing pitch-perfect timing and wringing empathy out of women who in other situations might not be very likable. The husbands are stronger than men usually are in chick flicks and McBurney very nearly steals the film as a man who is interested in clothes and design and who elicits attention -- much to his wife's annoyance -- from gay men who find him attractive.
While most of the film is well-written and acted, there are some difficulties. Aniston's Olivia is hard to figure. Until the film's end, she's her own worst enemy. By the time she does rouse herself, it's close to anticlimactic -- as is the film's conclusion. We get the feeling the script -- like Olivia -- is settling for the hand that's been dealt.
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