I’m under thirty, I’m not married, and I’m not a woman. So when speaking with Nancy Meyers about her new movie, It’s Complicated, I felt a bit like an interloper. I had the same feeling when I saw the film at a screening packed with women of a certain age—unlike my neighbors, I didn’t audibly moan at the sight of Meryl Streep tilling her perfect, organic vegetable garden, or cracking the feuilletée crust of a freshly baked chocolate croissant, or walking in on a naked Alec Baldwin. (To be fair, in the latter case, neither did they.) In fact, the only bit I could personally relate to was the sequence when the three get too stoned to function. Still, I found the film to be a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. Kind of like a lazy brunch at Le Pain Quotidien. Or like strolling through a Williams Sonoma where, even if you can’t afford anything, you can still snack on some of the free hors d’oeuvres from the test kitchen. Meyers is one of the only female writer-directors to make studio films. She’s also one of the few Hollywood screenwriters to follow the write-what-you-know principle. As a result, she’s cornered the affluent divorcée market in an industry heavily oriented towards males under 35 and dominated by comic book movies and extraterrestrial adventure. In It’s Complicated, our January cover girl—Meryl Streep—plays Jane, a fifty-something mother of three grown-up kids, who, after having given up on love, all of a sudden finds herself sucked into a love triangle between her cocky ex-husband (Alec Baldwin) and the sweet, nerdy architect (Steve Martin) assigned to redesign her kitchen. Though I wasn’t exactly her target audience, Meyers responded congenially, even when I essentially accused her of mongering lifestyle porn. She also touched on the importance of emotional truthfulness, the eternal appeal of Meryl Streep, and the surprise of learning her two male leads would co-host the Oscars.

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