Toronto Film Review: ‘The Land of Steady Habits’

At its best, the land of writer-director Nicole Holofcener is a sly and invigorating place — wittier than life, full of human surprise, grounded in the ways that happiness and heartache dance together. Her movies can be deceptively light, but she crafts each one with acerbic affection, and in a highly personal and selective way. (She has made just six features, starting with “Walking and Talking” in 1996.) It’s my feeling, too, that she has only grown as an artist. “Friends with Money” (2006) presented a slew of characters so weirdly sympathetic in their middle-class avarice that they popped off screen, and in “Enough Said” (2013), Holofcener figured out how to do what no previous filmmaker had: She got James Gandolfini to give a marvelous performance that shed any last vestige of his Tony Soprano aura.
Holofcener’s new movie, “The Land of Steady Habits,” is the first one she has made based on material that she didn’t originate herself. You can see why: When she read Ted Thompson’s 2014 novel, she must have thought it played just like one of her films. The movie is set in upscale suburban Connecticut (the title is an old nickname for that sedately moneyed place), and it’s rooted in feelings of loss, yet the characters are rarely at a loss for a puckish rejoinder. That syncs right up with the Holofcener touch. In theory, “The Land of Steady Habits” should be another of her impeccably cut slices of life.

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