无须多言

It makes me wonder how a relationship starts from the very beginning.

I can't help imagine what life would be like for a couple in 10 or 20 or... years time.

Is it the truth that the right person for you is gonna be not so right sooner or later?

Maybe oneday I would find out answers for that.

《无须多言》是男主角詹姆斯·甘多菲尼去世前倒数第二部电影，影片结尾处字幕写着“献给吉姆”。是一部平实近人、温情动人的“话痨体”爱情电影，前半段风趣幽默令我嘴角上扬，后半段却不禁陷入深思和困惑，你是否也会因别人的一席话，而开始看不清你面前的那个人，可你明明自以为很了解他了啊。片中很多幽默的对话、真实的细节，也很喜欢两个角色及其之间的感情，令人心安。

Since rom-com for grown-ups has officially become a dying species in Hollywood-land, one must go back a few years to find some decent ones, ENOUGH SAID, the fifth feature of Nicole Holofcener, is a rare movie showcase for beloved TV megastar Julia Louis-Dreyfus, playing Eva, a divorcée who earns her living as a masseuse, and incidentally twigs that the man she is currently dating, Albert (Gandolfini), is in fact the ex-husband of her new client Marianne (Keener), what will you do under such circumstance?

Like as not, we might have the same reflexive reaction as Eva, who promptly mines the opportunity to get to know the lowdown of Albert by subtly cajoling Marianne to open up about their failed marriage, presumably it gets her an upper hand of appraisal whether Albert is the right person for her, but rubbed off on Marianne’s negative opinions about him, Eva ineluctably puts strains on their inchoate romance, until, she is finally got busted and has to face the music.

As a trenchant object lesson on “one woman’s meat is another woman’s poison and vice versa”, ENOUGH SAID nonetheless, coats its white-bread central crisis with a glistening cast, Louis-Dreyfus’ comical chops and self-deprecating sharp-wittedness spiritedly rounds off Eva’s commonplace but endearing persona, and Gandolfini (reaping awards-season trophies in his penultimate movie, still missing out a posthumous Oscar-nomination, which colors the movie’s serio-comic tone with a whiff of doleful sadness), excellently imparts an avuncular, rough-around-the-edge vibe and vamps it up with his underutilized funny bone, an image couldn’t be more different from his iconic work in THE SOPRANOS, and audience can certainly abandon oneself in the sparks-fly chemistry between these two veteran performers, plus the icing on the cake from a Bohemian Catherine Keener (overcoming the unsavory characterization of a bad-mouthing ex-wife with unfeigned spontaneity and nonplussed frustration) and a radiant but sometimes clueless Toni Colette as Eva’s best friend Sarah.

A secondary plot pivoting on a middle-aged parent’s bittersweet acceptance of their child’s induction of adult hood puts both Eva and Albert in the same position and counterpoises the romantic pell-mell with a weepy mood that might hit the movie’s target audience hardest. But when all is said and done, witty, sophisticated and intrinsically funny, ENOUGH SAID might be quintessentially televisual in its building blocks, but no one should disparage its illuminating relationship tenet in the nucleus.

referential entries: Yaron Zilberman’s THE LATE QUARTET (2012, 6.7/10); Jonathan Levine’s LONG SHOT (2019, 7.0/10).

Eva: I'm trying to protect myself, you know? Because we borh married bofore. And you know how things can turn out..

Albert: What about us? What about protecting us?

Eva: I didn't protect us. And it didn't get poisoned Albert. I still really wanted us to keeping seeing each other.

Albert: I wouldn't know how, you know.

Eva: I'm sososososo sorry.

Albert: l know it sounds corny, but you broke my heart. And I'm too old for that shit. And the worst part is that you make me look like an idiot in front of my daughter.

Eva: I'm the idiot. I'm the idiot.

Albert：Look I got a lot to do...

Albert: I should tell you I bought some nice tables.

Eva:You did?

Ablert: No! No I didn't.

Eva: Ok, that's good!