Nobody’s making ‘em quite like Nicole Holofcener. Times may have changed, Nicole Holofcener has not. And the gaps in between her films have always been too long for my liking. Her last film was 2018’s The Land of Steady Habits, a Netflix movie that felt so unlike a Holofcener movie, I still haven’t made it all the way to the end of it. At her best, she’s giving us films like Please Give, Enough Said, Lovely and Amazing, and Friends With Money – or co-writing on interesting screenplays like The Last Duel and Can You Ever Forgive Me. She’s always told stories of the bicoastal elite, writers/actors, etc and their problems, in the vein of someone like Woody Allen. But unlike Allen, Holofcener reliably finds a way to make these stories feel humane, truthful and relatable to just about anyone.

Beth Mitchell (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is an author who once wrote a moderately well-received memoir that her mother (Jeannie Berlin) insists should have done better. Her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) is a therapist who is beginning to wonder if he’s any good at his job in the first place. One day when out shopping with her sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins), she overhears Don and Sarah’s husband Mark (Arian Moayed) discussing the new book Beth has written, which Don has read many manuscripts for. Don doesn’t like the book, and has lied to Beth about it all this time. Beth is devastated. Beth ponders what to do next, and if her loved ones have simply been humoring her about her life’s work all this time.

You Hurt My Feelings is a movie about the little white lies we tell our loved ones to spare their feelings, but what happens when one finds out you’ve been full of shit this whole time. And it’s a perfect date movie because it brings up a lot of discussion items about how you want to be treated in a relationship. Do you want the brutal truth that can tear a relationship apart or do you want polite lies even if they aren’t really doing any damage? Most of us would say we do want to be given the truth, but what does that really mean when you’re in the thick of it? Also, as a creative person who puts so much of yourself into your art, criticism of your work can feel like criticism of you, as a person, since you can be so close to it, and it can be hard to differentiate and set the two apart.

Julia Louis Dreyfus, having previously worked with Holofcener on another one of her best films, Enough Said, returns in prime form here. And Louis-Dreyfus is truly underappreciated as a dramatic actress, always bringing her A-game in roles like this, the kind she doesn’t get often enough. She’s a comedic powerhouse, but she can kind of do anything, and this film is a great reminder of that. Tobias Menzies is also very good here, and his character’s point of view is equally well-realized as the therapist who fears he’s become or has always been a hack. A couple (real-life spouses David Cross and Amber Tamblyn) in therapy accuse him of being terrible at his job, and this escalates in a very funny way. Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies have a lived-in, believable repartee as this couple who’s about to reach a breaking point.

The murderer’s row of character actors here is just further proof of how great it must be to work with Nicole Holofcener. Michaela Watkins is a total scene-stealer here, playing an interior designer who begins to have a creative crisis of her own. As stated, the bits with David Cross and Amber Tamblyn are great. Jeannie Berlin, as Beth and Sarah’s mother is very good, and gives you lots of insight as to how these women became who they are. Owen Teague, a bright spot in last summer’s otherwise not-great Montana Story, is very good as Beth and Don’s son, who is struggling to find his place in the world.

In the end, You Hurt My Feelings is absolutely top tier Nicole Holofcener. It’s sharp, it’s hilarious, it’s extremely well-observed, it’s mean but it’s rooted in humanity. It’s telling a very specific story of creative intellectual types with the kind of nuance and relatability that I think there’s a lot here for just about any audience. Really, it should be required viewing for anyone who’s been married longer than, say 10-15 years. You’re bound to have interesting discussions afterwards.