much left to say for Julia Louis-Dreyfus Trailer: Enough Said A divorced woman who decides to pursue the man she's interested in learns he's her new friend's ex-husband. PT2M29S http://www.smh.com.au/action/externalEmbeddedPlayer?id=d-2v3xu 620 349 October 7, 2013 By every measure at Hollywood's disposal, actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus is hot. The 52-year-old is starring in Veep, arguably the most brilliant comedy currently on American television. And for her labours on that series, she has just been rewarded with her fourth Emmy Award. In the film Enough Said she stars opposite the late James Gandolfini. It is a gentle romantic comedy which has won wide critical acclaim. The New York Times said it was "line for line, scene for scene ... one of the best-written American film comedies in recent memory." Julia Louis Dreyfus in Enough Said. Easing into a pristine white sofa in a room at LA's fashionable Casa del Mar hotel, her moment in the zeitgeist, and its meaning, is not lost on Louis-Dreyfus. "It's an amazing confluence of events right now, it's extraordinary," she says. These projects don't come along often. Veep is a godsend, Enough Said is a miracle. And the fact they have all come together at this time is something to savour because it might be otherwise. I have been doing this long enough to know that it will, at some point, change. Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva in the film, a massage therapist who is grappling with sending her daughter off to college and dealing with the unexpected arrival of a suitor, Albert (Gandolfini), in her life. James Gandolfini in Enough Said. Written by Nicole Holofcener, it is a gorgeously textured romance, knitted together with dialogue of the how-people-actually-speak kind, rather than the slightly heightened, no-one-speaks-like-that dialogue preferred by most cloying, predictable Hollywood romances. Enough Said has a refreshing truth to it, twisting something with a taut emotional truth - losing a child to their own adulthood - with beautiful farce, and a collection of brilliant characters including Eva's new client, Marianne, (Catherine Keener), a poet whose bitter observations about marriage develop an unexpected significance, and Eva's best friend, Sarah (Toni Collette), who serves as a sounding board as Eva digs herself deeper into an increasingly hilarious pit. It began, Louis-Dreyfus says, when she sat down with Holofcener to discuss the project. "I started to tell her about my experience as a mother of two children, one of whom had fairly recently gone off to college, and I talked about how that was for me emotionally, psychologically, and what it was like in our family," she says. Catherine Keener in Enough Said. It was a very intimate conversation, and we immediately bonded because we really got down to it from the get-go, right away. We kind of fell in love with each other. In a very personal way, the script held particularly resonance for Louis-Dreyfus who, with husband writer/director Brad Hall, has two sons, Henry and Charles. One scene in particular, when Eva farewells her daughter, Ellen (Tracey Fairawa), at the airport, was particularly wrenching. I went home really tired. That was a really, really, really draining day," she says. You have to find a way to make it resonate personally if you're going to give a performance. And it was thrilling because we got the job done but you know after you've had a big, deep, long cry and you feel utterly drained? That's how it was. I was wiped. Toni Collette in Enough Said. What is so fascinating about Louis-Dreyfus' career is her close collaborations with writers whose work speak with very distinct voices: Larry David (Seinfeld), Kari Lizer (The New Adventures of Old Christine), Armando Iannucci (Veep) and Holofcener. "It doesn't mean it has to be the same voice every time," she says. Obviously Nicole's voice is different from Kari's, different from Armando's, Larry's, my husband's. It's all different. But, for me, you have to work in concert with each other. In Veep, Louis-Dreyfus plays Selina Meyer, a fictional vice-president of the United States. The series, from The Thick of It creator Armando Ianucci, has won wide acclaim for its delicious, ruthless deconstruction of political spin and gamesmanship in the US capital, Washington DC. For Louis-Dreyfus, the role is a gift. "The political world and DC, inside the beltway, has been depicted as a very sinister environment in film and television, or as an earnest and well-meaning place, but never somewhere in the middle," she says. It's a new angle and because the voice is fresh and the material is fundamentally funny people dig it. Iannucci, she says, has a very different process as a collaborator. It's a very organic process. It's sort of a moving target all the time, which I adore. I don't know how to describe it. I trust [Armando] completely. And he's a wonderful guy to trust. He knows what he's doing. With these two distinct feathers in her cap, there is a sense in the US media that the so-called Seinfeld "curse" - the inability of its stars to move on to equally successful projects in the wake of that series wrapping in 1998 - has been broken for Louis-Dreyfus. In truth, it isn't something that has much meaning for her, and has been, for most of its life, more of a preoccupation of journalists. "It's a meaningless nothing that sort of got legs for some inexplicably moronic reason," she says. To have a hit series is such a blessing, that in and of itself is against all odds. To go on from there, as I said in my [Emmy] acceptance speech, it's too much to bear. It's silly. Perhaps the most striking thing about Enough Said is the presence, and brilliance, of Gandolfini himself. His long career on the stage and in film was defined, in the end, by a single role: that of mobster Tony Soprano in the critically acclaimed HBO series The Sopranos. Enough Said reveals an entirely different side to Gandolfini, and one which Louis-Dreyfus says is closer to real man. Gandolfini died of a heart attack in June this year, a loss which his co-star concedes has fundamentally altered how she looks at the film. She considers the question. "It must, right?" she says. I had seen the film a number of times in various iterations before he passed away, and then I saw it after. And it has changed. Speaking personally, I think what he did in this movie was reveal a big chunk of himself. It was very close to who he was. He was this gentle giant. He was protective and dear and kind of self-effacing, the way Albert was in the film. "I miss him," she says simply. We discuss Gandolfini's physicality. Meeting him myself, the most striking thing about him was his physicality. And his immenseness. Standing at 184 centimetres, he cut a formidable figure. Out of a suit, in Enough Said, it's hard not to be reminded of the size of his hands, of his feet, and the scale of the man. It's funny you say that, but when we got together at Nicole's house to talk about the script, I noticed his hands which were massive. I said they were like paddles, and that line was worked into the script," Louis-Dreyfus says. He was a huge guy. Over six feet tall. And this twinkling face. He was just lovely. What is heartbreaking for Louis-Dreyfus is that Gandolfini himself is not with us to his thoughts about the film. Tragically, he did not survive to see the film on the big screen. God, I hope he would have liked it. Swansong for Gandolfini With its famous leading man gone, Enough Said carries a bitter-sweet, poignant edge, writes Ed Gibbs. Brad Pitt described him as a "ferocious actor, a gentle soul and a genuinely funny man," having worked with James Gandolfini on Andrew Dominik's 2012 brooding crime drama Killing Them Softly. Given Pitt's comments, it is not such a huge shock to see Gandolfini poking fun at his weight issues, in his final lead role on screen. The Italian-American star - whose face appeared in more than 40 feature films - has a pivotal scene midway through Enough Said, when his character, Albert, asks Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus): "Can you breathe when I'm on top of you?" Eva is soon seen scolding Albert for his eating habits. Now, the film feels almost eerily prophetic. Gandolfini died in June, from a massive heart attack, aged just 51. Aside from being a smoker, the Sopranos star reportedly weighed in at a hefty 125 kilograms. "A ticking time bomb" was how one doctor put it, on the star's sudden passing while on holiday with his family in Rome. When I do get thin - which isn't often - I don't feel the same. I don't walk the same," Gandolfini said on US TV's Inside the Actors Studio a few years ago. He was referring to his career-defining turn, as Tony Soprano. But his comments applied just as much to his own life, away from the stage and screen. Enough Said - whose credits finish with a simple and fitting "For Jim" - has an added poignancy that few could have foreseen. It is a fitting epitaph for a much-loved star. There is one more on-screen performance of Gandolfini's still to come: a supporting role, in Dennis Lehane's crime-drama Animal Rescue, alongside Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Animal Kingdom's James Frecheville. But it is Nicole Holofcener's warm-hearted romantic comedy for grown-ups that is being widely viewed as the great man's big-screen swansong. And few will argue with that. Enough Said is out on Thursday.