Nicole Holofcener, director of Please Give and Walking & Talking among others, is known for her refreshingly uncomplicated movies about relationships between relatively normal, relatively grown-up people-- in a time when so many rom-coms need to gin up the most ridiculous excuses for story, Holofcener will put her characters in one place, wind them up, and watch what happens. But in her next film Enough Said, things seem to be getting a bit trickier. In the film's first trailer, which you can watch above or in HD at Apple, we watch Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini fall into what seems like your average, genial middle-aged relationship… until we find out that Louis-Dreyfus's newfound friend (Catherine Keener) is also his ex-wife. And Louis-Dreyfus's character plans to keep that information to herself.
Of course, this completely charming looking rom-com comes with a major touch of heartbreak, watching James Gandolfini in one of the final roles he played before his incredibly premature death in June. Co-star Toni Collette (using her real Australian accent in this trailer) told us a few weeks later that it was a role close to Gandolfini's actual personality, "a total teddy bear," and that the film would show him "sought after, loved, talked about." When the film's first images premiered, Holofcener revealed that Gandolfini worried he couldn't pull the part off: "He didn't believe he could play a romantic lead, even though everyone on the set thought he was sexy and hilarious." Of course, according to Holofcener and the evidence we see here, he pulled it off just fine. “He was charming and self-effacing and incredibly talented. Not only did he pull off playing a leading man, his performance is subtle and moving and very, very lovely."
Credit to Holofcener and Fox Searchlight, the film's distributor, for releasing a trailer that seems true to the spirit of the film, and making no effort to capitalize on the fact that it's one of the final performances by a beloved actor. If Enough Said is as charming and enjoyable as it seems here, it ought to be a chance to celebrate Gandolfini's incredible talents and wide range as an actor. If it comes with a little sadness about his untimely death, that's OK too.
Enough Said opens September 20.
