Directed by Nicole Holofcener, ''Lovely And Amazing'' is an insightful comedy about the relationship between a mother and her three confused daughters. It might sound like yet another annoying and predictable chick flick, but it is so more than that. There are surprising twists and turns in the plot at every point. The film’s highlight is a great (and uncomfortable) scene when one of the daughters, Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) stands naked in front of her lover, and asks him to subject her body to an honest and brutal criticism. When he forgets about her flabby underarms, she points them out. Roger Ebert, while viewing the film at Telluride, noticed a curious thing about the audience: ''during most nude scenes involving women, men are silent and intent. During this scene, which was not focused on sexuality but on an actual female body, attractive but imperfect, it was the women who leaned forward in rapt attention''. Another sister, Michelle (Catherine Keener) finds a job at a one-hour photo stand, where a fellow employee, a teenage boy (Jake Gyllenhaal), falls in love with her. She also likes him and eventually finds herself in his bedroom. Curiously, the film holds an adult woman to the same standard as an adult man. The teenage boy’s mother calls the police and accuses Michelle of statutory rape. As Ebert writes, ''there is some doubt about what exactly has taken place, but at least "Lovely And Amazing" doesn't repeat the hypocrisy that it's all right for adult women to seduce boys but wrong for adult men to seduce girls''.
