It can be nice to hear lies about oneself, bad to hear incivility. In Nicole Holofcener‘s You Hurt My Feelings (2023), people certifiably hear both.

Herein: “A novelist’s longstanding marriage is suddenly upended when she overhears her husband giving his honest reaction to her latest book” (imdb).

But Holofcener, who wrote and directed this comedy-drama, is not pretentious. She declines to make the “upending” worse than it actually would be and is intent to frequently amuse us. We do shake our heads over human behavior, though. Feelings is seamlessly made with appealing performances by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Arian Moayed and plenty of others. It’s better written, I believe, than the director’s Please Give. The film reminds us that human approval is not easily had; ah, but the piece easily has mine.