friends with money

it was quite a relief watching Steven Soderburgh's Bubble tonight after sitting through Friends With Money this afternoon. Bubble's starkness and simplicity of characters and plot provided a sharp contrast to Nicole Holofcener's third, and least appealing, cinematic effort. Walking and Talking was highly amusing; Lovely and Amazing had some excruciatingly real moments; Friends With Money was entirely unrealistic, fairly pointless and, at times, laughable. Holofcener takes some of the best women actors out there and curses them with ridiculous characters. Frances McDormand plays a successful clothes designer married to a rampant metrosexual. her climactic mental breakdown consists of yelling at people who cut in line ahead of her in Old Navy and refusing to wash her hair. are these things so wrong? Catherine Keener is uncharacteristically whiny and confused, drawing zero sympathy for her mismatched marriage to self-absorbed Jason Isaacs. Joan Cusack plays a vacuous millionaire who finds bliss in a marriage based on prolific sex, excessive consumption and a complete void of meaningful communication. Jennifer Aniston, out of her league in the company of these women, plays a maid with less than zero self-esteem in a performance that makes you want to reach out to the screen and slap her.
on the other hand, Bubble, with its slow pace and cast of unknowns, compellingly explores the depths of boredom that derive from dead-end factory jobs in an impoverished town.
the theme these movies had in common: maids who violate their employer's privacy - one by using a vibrator, the other by indulging in a bubble bath. I'll let you guess which one was which.