Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings is a film about trust, lies, and the things we say to the people we love most.

New York novelist Beth has been working for years on the follow-up to her somewhat successful memoir, sharing countless drafts with her approving, supportive husband Don. However, Beth’s world quickly unravels when she overhears Don admit to her brother-in-law, Mark, that he actually does not like her new book. She vents to her sister Sara that decades of a loving, committed marriage pale in comparison to this immense betrayal. Meanwhile, therapist Don faces his own professional problems as he finds himself unable to care about or even recall the personal issues of his unhappy patients (particularly a hilariously unsatisfied couple portrayed by Amber Tamblyn and David Cross, who are married in real life) and they have started to notice.

Writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Walking and Talking, Friends with Money) has made a cleverly observed, witty film that delicately skewers its sharply drawn, imperfect characters whose insecurities, privilege, and narcissism reveal their true feelings, with hilarious yet profound consequences.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who starred in Enough Said, her first collaboration with Nicole Holofcener) and Tobias Menzies lead a uniformly superb, funny cast, as they pull everyone around them into the fallout of navigating whether loving someone also requires loving their work. Michaela Watkins stands out as the frank, unflappable Sara, who handles her own marriage to sensitive actor, Mark (played with charm by Arian Moayed), much more deftly.