FRIENDS WITH MONEY
With friends like these, who needs money anyway?
Popcorn Reel.com
Film Review: “Friends With Money”
By Omar P.L. Moore/April 15, 2006
Nicole Holofcener's keenly observant comedy of
impoliteness is edgy all the way as it examines the upper crust ways and whims
of the carefree and dysfunctional rich set in Los Angeles. Her camera
shakes almost all the time, not only because it is uncomfortable with what it
sees, but also because of what it implies. There is a lot left unsaid in
"Friends With Money" and this is its greatest asset. Hand-held shots
dominate throughout as we glimpse the lives and intimacies of four women, three
of whom are well-heeled, one of whom is not.
Jennifer Aniston, whose range of choices has grown exponentially since her fine
work in "The Good Girl" in 2002, is the poor little poor girl, and Ms.
Holofcener's film both begins and ends with her, perhaps suggesting that the
movie's title springs from the thoughts of the character that Ms. Aniston plays.
The character is a maid, who boosts from the apartments that she cleans. A
drug addict and dabbler in the marital bliss of others, Olivia (Aniston) lives
vicariously through the products that the affluent house owner has -- and we see
this right away in the opening scene. She is needy, desperate and very
lonely.
Olivia's three friends, Franny (Joan Cusack), Christine (Catherine Keener) and
Jane (Frances McDormand) are rich but as the saying goes in Tinseltown, all that
glitters is not gold. One is wholly distanced from the friends she thought
she had something in common with, one has an ice-cold, emotionally malicious
spouse, and the third, Jane, is ABC all the time: angry, bitter and cranky, and
married to a man whom her back-biting friends strongly suspect is gay.
Shopping for happiness: Jennifer Aniston as Olivia, and Frances McDormand as
Jane, in Nicole Holofcener's "Friends With Money".
Pictures courtesy of: Sony Classics
The "gay question" permeates the film for several stretches, as if an in-joke,
as stereotypes of gay male behavior are gleefully paraded in a way designed to
bring laughs to a story that doesn't lack for them. There is an
interesting interplay between Aaron (Simon MacBurney) and Aaron (Ty Burrell),
both of whom play married men. All the while Ms. Holofcener invites us to
question whether these two men are just friendly or whether they are flirting
towards another dimension of relationship. There is a camera shot of the
Aarons at a movie theater when watching a film and the angle of the camera
suggests that the ultimate answer to the "are they? or aren't they?" is best
left unresolved.
This dilemma is not the main part of "Friends With Money", though it is
entertaining, as are the characters played by Aniston and McDormand in
particular. Jane dresses down anyone who crosses her path, whether they
have crossed it benignly or otherwise. Jane admits that she is unhappy,
but she doesn't ever change her abrasive ways even after she experiences pain.
This is the key constant of the film -- nothing in the characters' dispositions
ever changes, even if the interactions and the situations they experience do.
Olivia mopes around, role plays, chases men such as a sleazy, freeloading
personal trainer (hilariously played by Scott Caan) who is nothing but a useless
excuse for a disconnected lay in the hay where Olivia is concerned. As
Franny astutely observes, Olivia is all-too-ready to compromise herself to make
others (in this case men) happy, to her own detriment. Both Aniston and
McDormand shine in their roles, stealing scenes with aplomb.
The script, as written by Ms. Holofcener crackles with bright one-liners and the
keen, familiar pitch-perfect banter of adults who are safe and secure
financially yet so deeply insecure and lonely emotionally. Though films
like "Laurel Canyon" (in which Ms. McDormand starred) and other Los Angeles
character dramas ("Magnolia" and "Shopgirl" for instance) come to mind, "Friends
With Money" is enjoyable, if only (for some at least) a barely comfortable
distance.
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