As major studio efforts have been almost entirely overtaken by a style of storytelling that relies on threats to very fabric of reality to satisfying the need for ever-escalating stakes and even most indie filmmakers are forced to concoct jarring hooks to get their art noticed, it’s especially pleasurable to see that writer-director Nicole Holofcener is sticking with her specialization of finding the meaningful in the seemingly mundane. Going all the way back to her splendid feature debut, Walking and Talking, Holofcener makes chatty movies about the emotional and cultural perils of simply existing as a modern human being. Her work consistently displays a cunning awareness of all the ways our own psyches can send us spiraling and the external forces that only accelerate the rotations. That she finds resonant humor in these foibles makes it all that much more satisfying.

Holofcener’s latest, You Hurt My Feelings, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Beth Mitchell, a writer with a limited bibliography who teaches college courses on the side. She’s is a comfortable marriage with Don (Tobias Menzies) and spends time swapping wearily wry quips with her sister, Sarah (Michaela Watkins). Beth is fretting over her new book, her first novel, because her literary agent has been suspiciously silent about it. Don, her first reader, insists the novel is strong, but Beth overhears him telling Sarah’s partner, Mark (Arian Moayed), that he actually didn’t like it. Already feeling fragile about her writing, Beth is cast into chaos.

That plot serves as the spin of the film, but Holofcener knows how to make the most of her themes. As she’s done in her strongest films — Lovely and Amazing is the title that comes to mind — Holofcener creates a vast sociological ecosystem out of her animating situation. Echoes of Beth’s situation abound in the film. All the subplots of interpersonal intrigue and every last scene are tinsel-strewn with the same concerns: the fragility of vanity, the balm and betrayal of white lies, all the different permutations of trying to help that are instead virulent. Everyone’s a mass of vulnerabilities, and it can seem like the totality of lived experience is engaged in a unchecked conspiracy to rend those weaknesses open further, wider and wider.

Holofcener’s attention to the details of how people traverse these emotional perils is a gift to actors. Up and down they cast, they respond with bright, snappy performances. In addition to the exemplary performers already mentioned, there are dandy turns from Owen Teague, as Beth and Don’s stalled writer son, and Jeannie Berlin, as Beth and Sarah’s challenging mother. No one oversells the laugh lines, confident in the certainty of Holofcener’s dialogue. Sometimes the best hook a film can have is not a last act switcheroo or some sort of high wire invention. Soundly rendered writing is more precious than any of those gimmicky grabbers. If a scene here or there doesn’t quite work, the assemblage is still as sturdy as a brick edifice. You Hurt My Feelings is a true gift.