Film Reviews

Friends with Money

• Rating:
• Director: Nicole Holofcener
• Starring: Catherine Keener
• Details: US, 88mins, 15A.

Olivia (Anniston) is part of a group of friends who are very well off - except for her. Having dumped her teaching job, she is now cleaning people's houses, smokes grass and longs for a married man whom she had a fling with despite dating an asshole personal trainer. Two of her friends: Jane (McDormand), a feisty clothes designer, Christine (Keener), a script writer, have problems with their husbands while Franny (Cusack), a bored housewife, is content to leave the raising of the kids to the nanny. What follows is an insight into the world inhabited by these four women and the trials and tribulations suffered. Some might get a faint whiff of Desperate Housewives or a Woody Allen film that never gets out of second gear and in truth both boxes are ticked but Friends With Money is something else too. Writer-director Nicole Holofcener weaves an interesting multi-narrative story through the lives of four women but it is not the story that grabs you - it's the well-crafted characters. Holofcener's sprawling realistic dialogue is a lesson to all budding scriptwriters hoping to give their characters some depth and her delicate comedic elements are a delight; relying on character to get the laughs rather than one-liners and avoids overblown pathos so rife in other thirty-something women orientated movies. Cusack has slowly grown into a great character actor, Keener is engaging and McDormand is as great as ever as the bitchy wife of a husband her friends think is gay but it is Anniston is the surprise here; totally inhabiting a role for the first time in her career.

Review by Gavin Burke