“Friends with Money” is the telling new comedy from the acclaimed writer/director Nicole Holofcener.
And pits Jennifer Aniston with a whole new slew of friends. Jennifer Aniston, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack and Catherine Keener star as a quartet of west coast, life-long friends who have achieved a level of comfort in their lives and have now settled into a life of designer clothes, charity events, and caring for the men (and offspring) in their lives. But as they approach ‘a certain age,’ unsettling things are starting to throw their comfortable lives off balance. There’s Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) who, reaching a personal crisis, has quit her teaching job and is now cleaning houses for a living. She is looking for support – fiscal and emotional – from her more well-heeled acquaintances and continues her search for a significant other among the slim pickings on offer. Jane and Aaron (Frances McDormand and Simon McBurney) are successful designers whose marriage has reached a pivotal point in which the pair have become oblivious to each other’s concerns, and perhaps even to their own natures. Christine and her husband Patrick (Catherine Keener and Jason Isaacs) are a professionally partnered, screenwriting couple whose latest projects – co-writing a script and expanding their house – raise tensions at home to a new level. Franny and Matt (Joan Cusack and Bob Stephenson) are the independently wealthy ones, raising their two children amidst an abundant lifestyle that calls their united front of a partnership into question. As the couples move from one get together to another, a group portrait begins to emerge of people in like and love with one another, in various configurations. Friends with Money is a modern comedy drama about contemporary adults in search of love, friendship, and filthy lucre but finding everything in a state of constant flux.
