Director Nicole Holofcener: ‘If you didn’t like my movie, why wouldn’t you lie a little better?’

Is honesty really the best policy in human relationships? And what if an honest opinion proves devastating? These questions form the crux of You Hurt My Feelings, the new comedy-drama by Nicole Holofcener, in which a New York writer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) overhears a scathing assessment of her latest novel proffered by her most trusted and supportive reader — her husband (Tobias Menzies).

“It’s such an ironic situation,” Holofcener, 63, says of promoting the film. “Because now people are watching the movie, and I can tell when they’re lying about whether or not they liked it. And I think: if you didn’t, why wouldn’t you just try to lie a little better, being what the movie’s about?”

Having already expressed my genuine admiration for the film, I now wonder if I was convincing.

Holofcener and I are sitting on a window bench in a quiet corner of a hotel in Bloomsbury, central London. On another bench, less than a mile away, sit Churchill and Roosevelt, immortalised in bronze bonhomie by her father, the sculptor Lawrence Holofcener. He is not the only family member with an artistic bent. The film-maker’s mother is Carol Joffe, a set decorator whose credits include Woody Allen’s Radio Days and Hannah and Her Sisters, while her late stepfather was Allen’s longtime producer Charles H Joffe. The young Holofcener cut her teeth as a production assistant on A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) and as apprentice editor on Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

I ask how she feels about Allen these days. “Well, the movies that I’ve always loved, I still love. It doesn’t change his brilliant filmmaking.” The “it”, of course, is Allen’s alleged abuse of his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, a claim that was investigated in 1992 with no charges brought. “Honestly, I wasn’t there . . . I hope it’s not true, for the child’s sake. But his early movies to me were huge inspirations and still are.”

The association doesn’t end there. The two directors’ films share DNA in the form of editor Alisa Lepselter, who cut Holofcener’s 1996 debut. “She edited Walking and Talking, and then went on to edit 20 Woody movies. But I had her first. And now she’s back with me on You Hurt My Feelings.”

Holofcener is as warm and funny as her films, exuding at times a deadpan world-weariness. I sense she is tired of being asked about Allen, but I point out that she is probably doomed to be quizzed about him for eternity. “I know,” she sighs. “And he’s like: why does this woman keep talking about me? Why do people keep attaching us?”

In fact, the reason goes beyond the family connection and the shared editor. You Hurt My Feelings is populated by a cast of neurotic New York intellectuals who angst, kvetch and kibitz in a rhythm and cadence that recalls Neil Simon, Allen and Seinfeld. (Fans of the last of these may find the echoes amplified by the sparkling comic presence of Louis-Dreyfus, playing a character who could be a 60-ish Elaine, softened by age.) I wonder if Holofcener feels part of this lineage of New York Jewish writers.

“Part of a good club? I guess I am, now that you mention it, but I’m not a joiner. I join inadvertently.”

You Hurt My Feelings brings a likeable freshness to the form, incorporating modern mores without being earnestly consumed by them. Everyone in the film is suffering some kind of crisis of confidence, not just Louis-Dreyfus’s Beth: her therapist husband is turned on by two longtime patients; the couple’s adult son complains of being stifled by his parents’ excessive belief in him; and an actor friend is on the verge of quitting, exhausted by his own need for approval.

It is Holofcener’s seventh directorial feature, following a string of critical successes. The bittersweet romantic comedy Enough Said (2013) paired Louis-Dreyfus with James Gandolfini of Sopranos fame, tapping a gentler side of the actor’s range shortly before his untimely death, while The Land of Steady Habits (2018) cast Ben Mendelsohn as a feckless father adrift in a sea of drink, drugs and wealthy suburban self-loathing.

All are character-and-dialogue-driven, low on action and neat resolutions, exactly the kinds of films that people constantly say don’t get made any more. “I know,” Holofcener says. “Every time I make one, they say: ‘They don’t get made!’ And the truth is they don’t often.”

So how does she keep making them? “Good question,” she shrugs. “I have a really good producer, a really good casting director — and patience. None of my movies have lost money. So I always think: well, just give me a few million; I’m not going to lose it. But even just to get the few million is so difficult sometimes.”

Is it getting harder? “No, it’s always been hard. It took forever to get my first film made. And it’s not like I get more and more money or more and more [shooting] days as the years go by. I got less days on this film than on any of my films, even my first.”

Noting that her new film is performing well at the US box office, she laments that in the UK it is going straight to Prime Video without even a small theatrical window. Does she risk antagonising the streaming platform with this comment?

None of my movies have lost money. So I always think: well, just give me a few million; I’m not going to lose it

“Well, we’re already picketing Amazon and Netflix and everyone else,” she points out. On the current strike by writers and actors, who are pushing streamers and studios to improve pay conditions, she says: “Somebody’s getting rich, that’s all I’ve got to say. And I don’t know what they’re waiting for. It’s not like we’re going to give in — we can’t.”

Our conversation turns to the trend among some of her fellow indie directors to cross over to mega-budget studio films, notably Chloé Zhao, who went from The Rider and Nomadland to Marvel movie The Eternals, and Greta Gerwig, who has followed Lady Bird and Little Women with the $100mn Barbie.

“I have not been offered a Barbie or a Marvel, and that’s OK,” Holofcener says. “I wouldn’t even begin to consider doing a Marvel movie. I wouldn’t know how and I wouldn’t care enough. I did some writing on one. Female character polish stuff on Black Widow, and that was really fun.”

Our quiet corner has been invaded by a young couple armed with laptops and tablets. Multiple devices are plugged in, cables draped across tables. They seem to be using the small hotel sitting room to run a global new media empire. Holofcener marvels wide-eyed at the high-tech goings-on and leans over to whisper, “What are they doing?”

It resembles a scene in You Hurt My Feelings in which Louis-Dreyfus’s character bemoans her highly sanitised modern surroundings, hankering for old Manhattan diners with dirty menus and faded decor.

“When I was young and had no money, we’d just go to the diner and get eggs for $3,” Holofcener recalls. “The seats were torn — it was just such a New York thing. Now they’re gone and everything’s expensive coffee.”

Though she is based in Los Angeles, the lure of the Big Apple remains. “I still go to New York all the time. It’s either LA or New York,” she says. “I’m crazy to keep writing movies that take place in only two places, so I’m hoping my imagination will stir something to take me somewhere else.”

Perhaps, I suggest jokingly, she could hop from one picturesque European location to another in the style of late-career Woody Allen.

“Right!” she brightens at the thought, before adding sardonically: “And not because I’ve been run out of the country — but by choice.”

‘You Hurt My Feelings’ is on Prime Video in the UK from August 8