In theaters

LOVELY AND AMAZING, written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, 91 minutes, Rated R. Starts tonight, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Nicole Holofcener’s excellent new film, “Lovely and Amazing,” focuses on three women and one preadolescent girl, all of whom live lives that quietly – and sometimes not so quietly – inspire the film’s title.

Take, for instance, Jane (Brenda Blethyn), the matriarch of the group, a woman in her mid-50s with two adult daughters – Michelle (Catherine Keener) and Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) – and an adopted, 8-year-old African American daughter named Annie (Raven Goodwin).

So desperate is Jane to attract the attention of her handsome younger doctor, whom she secretly loves, she decides to undergo an emergency liposuction in an effort to streamline her body into what she feels will be a sexier, more acceptable shape. Her doctor does notice the effort, but that’s only because he’s the plastic surgeon who performed the procedure – and his comments, while favorable, are a disappointment that come too close on the heels of his bill.

Deepening the film’s dysfunction is Jane’s daughter, Elizabeth, who has chosen a career in which body-image is everything. As an aspiring actress and model, Elizabeth has been told countless times that she’s “not sexy enough” by people in the trade who are infamous for their unobtainable definition of what constitutes physical beauty. So consumed is she with her body, she strips naked in one memorable scene and asks her new lover, a vain television star played by Dermot Mulroney, to critique every inch of her figure, asking him to point out her flaws, which he does with a gentle yet uncomfortable thoroughness.

Michelle, a former high school prom queen now faced with a cheating husband, a dead career as an artist, and a body not as firm as she’d like it to be, has her own problems. Knowing her husband is having an affair, she accepts the sexual advances of a 17-year-old boy (Jake Gyllenhaal), incites the wrath of his mother, and then tries to deal with her younger sister, Annie, a compulsive overeater determined to straighten her hair and lighten her dark skin with makeup so she can appear Caucasian and blend in with the world around her.

“Lovely and Amazing,” from Holofcener’s own script, is about real people.

Its characters are human, with all that implies. Unlike Callie Khouri’s “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” a fun cartoon, “Amazing” is less interested in nudging its audience with laughter than it is with exploring the ramifications of our culture’s objectification of women. That makes it sound heavier than it is – the film is often funny in an edgy, biting sort of way – but by the time the last reel has played, it isn’t the self-effacing humor you remember as much as it is the pain that inspired it.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

BIRTHDAY GIRL, directed by Jez Butterworth, written by Tom and Jez Butterworth, 93 minutes, Rated R.

Jez Butterworth’s “Birthday Girl,” from a script he co-wrote with his brother, Tom, was shot in 1999, but after being pulled from its original September 2000 release due to poor test screenings, a nervous Miramax blew out the candles and shelved the movie – not exactly a show of support for its star, Nicole Kidman.

But then, just as everyone was going wild for Kidman after her back-to-back hits in “Moulin Rouge” and “The Others,” Miramax recognized its opportunity to strike and shrewdly dusted off the film, releasing it into the sea of good will.

They shouldn’t have worried. While it’s true that “Birthday Girl” isn’t as good as “Moulin Rouge” or “The Others,” it’s also far and away from the dreck of “Far and Away,” Kidman’s worst film.

What “Birthday Girl” does so well is showcase Kidman’s range and her willingness to take risks. In the film, she’s Nadia, a chain-smoking Russian who flies to London to marry John (Ben Chaplin), a lonely bank clerk who purchased her from the sleazy mail-order-bride Web site, “From Russia With Love.”

When Nadia arrives, she’s not exactly the woman John was expecting; she’s a bit hard around the edges and doesn’t speak much English. Still, as the days pass, Nadia wins him over with her charm, not to mention with her willingness to explore his B&D fetish. What looks like the start of a quirky romance becomes something all together different when Nadia’s two “cousins,” Yuri (Vincent Cassel) and Alexei (Mathieu Kassovitz), arrive on John’s doorstep with the force of two exploding Molotov cocktails. They cause all sorts of trouble, quickly turning this film on its side in ways that can’t be revealed here.

Grade: B

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

THE VIDEO/DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Birthday Girl ? B

The Business of Strangers ? B

Clockstoppers ? C

In the Bedroom ? A

The New Guy ? D

Showtime ? C+

Deuces Wild ? D-

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring ? B+

Collateral Damage ? D

Dragonfly ? D

Resident Evil ? C-

Crossroads ? C-

Kung Pow: Enter the Fist ? B-

The Time Machine ? D-

Amelie ? A

John Q. ? C-

Pinero ? B

Charlotte Gray ? B+

Hart’s War ? B

The Royal Tenenbaums ? B+

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius ? B+

Shallow Hal ? C

A Beautiful Mind ? B

Gosford Park ? B+

I Am Sam ? C

The Majestic ? D-

Max Keeble’s Big Move ? B

Orange County ? C-

The Shipping News ? C

Rollerball ? F

Black Hawk Down ? B

Kate & Leopold ? C+

Monster’s Ball ? A

The Mothman Prophecies ? C

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ? B 3/4

Sidewalks of New York ? B-

Lantana ? A

Vanilla Sky ? B+

Corky Romano ? D-

From Hell ? C

The Others ? B+

Snow Dogs ? B-

Ocean’s Eleven ? B

Waking Life ? A

Ali ? B+

Not Another Teen Movie ? C-

Behind Enemy Lines ? C-

No Man’s Land ? A

Black Knight ? F