Money is the root of all evil. All you need is love. Well, thanks to the Bible and The Beatles we have the perfect recipe for a happy and emotionally rewarding life.

Or not.

Writer/director Nicole Holofcener has taken three outwardly successful marriages and stormed the domestic ramparts to reveal a world short on intimacy, little self-worth but big on vulnerable egos.

Jane (McDormand), a top fashion designer and mother-of-one, is - depending on your point of view - a micro manager…or a control freak. And she's terrified that things are spinning out of her grasp.

Her easygoing, diligent husband Aaron (McBurney) is quietly supportive but his steadfastness is undermined by suspicions that his effeminate nature masks the truth that he's gay.

The chief rumour-monger here is Christine (Keener), whose relationship with her screenwriter husband Patrick (Isaacs) is unravelling, a situation they deal with by adding an unnecessary extension to their bungalow.

The nearest thing to a marital even keel is maintained by Franny (Cusack) and her husband Matt (Germann), a wealthier-than-they-need-to-be couple whose recipe for success is a simple: they like each other.

While all three parings enjoy the trappings of wealth - the sort of charity dinner where a prize is "Reese Witherspoon knitting you a sweater" - their mutual friend Olivia (Aniston) slobs around at the other end of the social scale.

After quitting her job at a posh Santa Monica school (the kids gave her quarters when they saw her beat-up Honda), she's now working as a cleaner and working her way through a series of demeaning and shallow relationships.

While her upwardly mobile pals both care and worry for her, Olivia's threadbare predicament allows them to feel slightly smug...but is she happier than they are?

This is richly rewarding contemporary look at life with terrific performances all round even if you inwardly doubt Aniston would ever find herself in grim domestic servitude.

A marked improvement on Holofcener's slightly twee Lovely & Amazing, it's a grown-up affair which which never gets overloaded with easy melodrama or cheap shots.

A film many can Relate to.

Tim Evans