Published May 8, 2015

Note: I wrote this more than two years before coming out as trans. Still inside my egg, I couldn’t say everything I wanted or needed to say, but this was as real as I’d allow myself to be publicly in those days. Looking back, I more easily see that I viewed him as a safe person and place for me to sometimes hide inside.

◊

“Enough Said” has been making the rounds on cable, and seeing it again reminded me of thoughts I scribbled down after watching it in the cinema in fall 2013. I recall wondering whether the movie would be a boost to the dating chances of big guys like Albert, played by the late James Gandolfini.

In fairness to writer/director Nicole Holofcener and everyone else who created “Enough Said,” let me assure you it is indeed a film and not a dating app. I don’t mean to relegate its art to something that might help someone find a dinner companion. The film has wit, and a soul, and it charms, to use a word I saw in more than one headline — including this one in reference to the male lead. For those who knew Gandolfini only as Tony Soprano on “The Sopranos,” the movie shows other aspects of his acting range. It does the same for those who know Julia Louis-Dreyfus only as Elaine from “Seinfeld.”

In an Associated Press story widely distributed around the time of the film’s release, Louis-Dreyfus was quoted about that side of Gandolfini.

The release of the film has been bittersweet for all of those involved, coming just three months after the death of Gandolfini. Louis-Dreyfus was a big admirer of the actor before working with him: “I thought he was sort of dreamy,” she says.

“James was very much like the character, Albert, that he plays in this movie: very dear, thoughtful, self-effacing kind of guy,” she says, choking up. “It’s lovely for his legacy and even for his family to have this performance documented because it shows him as this loving, dear man, which he was.”

Being roughly the same size and shape (and age) as Gandolfini when he made the movie, I was again reminded that I’ve found myself identifying with him in some ways since rediscovering him more than a decade ago (I’d seen him and liked him in other films, but his Tony Soprano is what hooked me). In the winter months, wearing a jacket not unlike one he would wear on “The Sopranos,” I sometimes recognized I also put on his lumbering walk, and when I noticed my shadow I couldn’t help imagining at times I was adopting his posture, maybe wearing the strong, assertive side of him as a shield. (Who would have thought that years earlier when I bought that jacket I was inadvertently paying, in the parlance of the mob world, protection money?)

After his death, which confronted me again with my own mortality and my struggles with my weight, I took some measure of solace, or maybe the twisted artistic license of rationalization, in what he said about his fluctuating weight during his segment on “Inside the Actors Studio.”

About 28 minutes in, Gandolfini answers the question about how important Tony’s weight was on the show. “It’s important,” he says. “When I do get thin — which is not often, but it does happen — I don’t feel the same. I don’t walk the same, he doesn’t walk the same, you know, with that lumber …”

He refers to “that middle,” meaning the large midsection, and suggests it was helpful to him in creating scenes as Tony. He gave me a lot to think about in terms of body image, body language, posture and hidden causes and effects. There is a vicious cycle wrapped up in such coping mechanisms, especially those connected to comfort food and body weight, but for him as an actor, he found a virtuous cycle that helped his art.

Of course, anytime a person who is overweight dies young of a heart attack, the obvious connections and conclusions will be drawn, with the familiar judgment, but it was interesting to hear him talk about the role his weight played in playing Tony Soprano. Carrying extra midsection weight around in midlife indeed carries risk, and it’s no doubt one of the reasons a guy like Albert in “Enough Said” might not have been given a second look by a woman like Eva. Louis-Dreyfus alluded to that dynamic in a television interview I saw in late 2013.

Speaking of Louis-Dreyfus, she brought her own baggage to her character, as she indicated in the story linked earlier in this piece, I won’t say her acting was Oscar-worthy, but she was up to the challenges of the emotional scenes. I was grateful, too, to see the movie with a mature audience, one that didn’t feel the need to fill the silent spaces with nervous laughter or other annoyances.

Because it’s a “grown-up” film, released in the fall, and because of Gandolfini’s death before its release, there was some talk about his name popping up in the conversation come awards season in spring 2014. He went on to be named Best Supporting Actor by the Boston Society of Film Critics, and nominated by other groups. Those honors were deserved, and not surprising to anyone who’s seen him in other roles that showcased his versatility.

Part of my fascination with Tony Soprano was his patient-therapist relationship with Dr. Melfi. I was freshly back in therapy when I saw “Enough Said,” and it was interesting to me how my identification with Gandolfini and some of his characters came full circle.

I have other memories of seeing the film in the cinema. One of the three women who sat in front of me said to her friends, after the final scene, “That was good. I wonder if there’ll be a sequel.”

I don’t think she was joking.

Looking back, I don’t think the movie got as much traction as I thought it would. I can’t even say it was as enjoyable the second time as it was the first, and as I got up during the writing of this paragraph for a coffee refill, lumbering toward the kitchen, I considered how timing can be everything. At the convergence of multiple things happening in my life in fall 2013, “Enough Said” tickled the identification and recognition parts of my psyche in ways that couldn’t be repeated in spring 2015. As the saying goes, you can’t step into the same river twice.

Still, it was touching to see it again, and this time the title reminded me of a favorite Tony Soprano saying — “End of story!” — from a much different corner of Gandolfini’s range.

Since seeing “Enough Said” for the first time, I’ve taken note of Nicole Holofcener’s body of work, and it’s impressive. Her sensibility is a wonderful part of American cinema and television.

OK. Time for more coffee.

End of story.