DRAMEDY OF ERRORS

You Hurt My Feelings fills the down-to-earth dramedy gap

BY LOGAN BUTTS

The dramedy is becoming a lost art.

Well, maybe not entirely. Sure, several currently airing (or streaming) popular and acclaimed TV shows could broadly be described as dramedies. But the types of directors who make these types of movies are finding it difficult to get funding for their films, even more so if the goal is to receive a theatrical run.

That struggle is why we haven’t seen a movie in theaters from one of the genre’s foremost auteurs, Nicole Holofcener, in quite some time. Holofcener has spent the past half-decade carving out a successful gun-for-hire writing career. In 2018, she earned a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination for the Marielle Heller-directed Can You Ever Forgive Me? In 2021, she was tapped by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to write the Jodie Comer-perspective chapter of their script for Ridley Scott’s Rashomonesque The Last Duel. Holofcener hasn’t directed a film since 2018’s The Land of Steady Habits, a Netflix release, and she hasn’t made a theatrically released movie since 2013’s excellent Enough Said, her previous collaboration with Julia LouisDreyfus.

You Hurt My Feelings is not only a reunion with Louis-Dreyfus (who’s potentially replacing Catherine Keener as Holofcener’s muse), but also a fun companion piece to Enough Said. Both are explorations of messy adult relationships. It also occupies a similar space as Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up — another 2023 film about the struggle