‘Suze’ Review: A Wonderful Michaela Watkins Leads an Understated Delight About Kindred Spirits and Familial Love

variety.com:

Tomris Laffly If you were to go into the winsome “Suze” blind, you would be forgiven for thinking that co-directors Linsey Stewart and Dane Clark’s sincere and often very funny little gem was some overlooked Nicole Holofcener movie finally getting its due. “Suze” is blessed with the same kind of lived-in attention to detail and authentic character-based drama that makes the “Lovely & Amazing” director’s work so relatable and compulsively rewatchable.

As such, this is a smart and emotionally immersive comfort movie where you get the happy with a side of sad in the same way that the messiness of our own lives often unfolds, with laughter and tears served as a pair in a package deal.

That quality permeates the film right from the opening scene, when a blissful couple’s coital moans take over the dark screen, resolving to the pained face of Susan (a brilliant Michaela Watkins), confronted with the sight of an alarming pair of off-camera lovers: She walks in on her husband Alan (Sandy Jobin-Bevans) having an affair with his golf instructor Jacinta (Sorika Wolf).

Arguably worse than the infidelity are the couple’s loud “I love you” exchanges, which clearly signal that Susan’s marriage is over.