"Friends With Money"

Directed by: Nicole Holofcener

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, Greg Germann, Simon McBurney, Jason Isaacs and Scott Caan.

MPAA rating: R (for adult language, adult situations)

Running time: 89 minutes

Best suited for: relationshiphiles

Least suited for: testosteroneprone, superficially minded, explosive hungry types looking for body counts

Relationship films rarely get better than this. In the recent tradition of angst-filled, comedictinged dramas like "Sideways" and "The Upside of Anger," "Friends With Money" is an astute observation, an honest portrayal of three-and-a-half couples living moderately comfortable lifestyles in L.A. What's missing is the stereotypical message most often found in films about friendship. These people feel real.

Among these couples, money seems more the unanticipated result of hard work and the right opportunities: all those bucks aren't life's end result but rather just another speed bump on the rocky road toward happiness.

Frances McDormand and Simon McBurney play Jane and Aaron; Jane owns a successful women's fashion line and, at 40something, has begun to fret incessantly about her own mortality. Behind Aaron's back, Jane's friends suspect that, because he's not a testosterone-driven SOB, he may be gay. Hardly malicious gossip, Aaron's sexuality seems simply tea and biscuit chitchat. One senses that speculation about Aaron-the film's most likable character-may be salve for his friends' own Preoccupation

with

appearances,

self-worth at heart of 'Friends

with Money' wounds. This all-too-human preoccupation with appearances and one's own self-worth is at the heart of "Friends With Money." The film could as easily have been called "Friends With Opinions" or "Friends With Baggage."

Catherine Keener and Jason Isaacs play Catherine and Patrick, a husband-and-wife screenwriting team who sit toeto-toe in their at-home office typing acrid dialogue that they first speak aloud. And while their fictional cynicism seems to have afforded them success, the line between their scripted and real-life emotions has blurred. Catherine realizes that love wrapped around myriad flaws is tolerable; love without respect is not.

Joan Cusack and Bob Stephenson play Franny and Marty, the film's wealthiest couple and also its most stable. Yet, like Jane, Cusack is neurotic, concerned that her own wealth might be adversely influencing her friends. Marty, like most guys, doesn't understand the paranoia. For Marty, money's a tool, not a consequence.

And then there's Olivia. Played with soulful frailty by Jennifer Aniston, Olivia is a former schoolteacher who couldn't cope and now cleans her friends' expensive homes to make ends meet. In a way, "Friends With Money" is her story-Olivia living the failure the others secretly fear.

Aniston is also the film's weakest link. Through no fault

of her own (her performance is sterling), casting the doe-eyed, 30-something Aniston as a woman who can't find a decent man or pull her life together is a cinematic cop-out, just a bit too left of reality to truly convince. Had she been older, saggier, her character not so charming, Olivia would have been more believable.

There are a couple of other missteps in the film. For instance, the sensitive Catherine appears shocked that her neighbors have problems with the addition of a second story to her hillside home, their displeasure having long before been dismissed by Patrick. And director Holofcener seems determined to point out that we all have goofy issues (ah, well, we probably do)-just that sometimes, with friends, they don't seem so severe.

But even with such infusions of angst, "Friends With Money" excels as a mirror of personal relationship issues. Not only is the dialogue dead-on credible, but it carries the tale far above the mundane, the maudlin and the melodramatic. The characters are fully fleshed, fully formed, warts-and-all believable. As with most comforting films, this one ended too soon.

In a nutshell: "Friends With Money" is an exceptional, wellconceived and nicely delivered "slice of reality" in the lives of seven people trying to cope with love and reality. It's a charming, bittersweet fable, a remarkably astute film as close to genuine as I've seen in a while. For the sensitive relationship addict, this one's a gem.