I wasn't sure what to expect from Nicole Holofcener's third venture, Friends with Money, the opening-night film of Sundance 2006.

Her first film, Walking and Talking (1996), was a genuinely funny and accurately observed movie about two NY women's friendship that's become a cult classic for a certain breed of chick. (The famous exchange: Todd Fields: Do we have to keep listening to this vagina music? Catherine Keener and Anne Heche, in unison: Yes!). But as so often happens with excellent female directors, Holofcener has mostly worked in TV since then — helming all the big girl-time shows from Gilmore Girls to The L Word to Sex and the City — and maybe all that Hollywood time soured her. Her next feature, 2001's Lovely & Amazing, about an LA middle-aged, well-off woman and her three chronically unhappy daughters, took such a pessimistic attitude about human nature that it rendered the characters not only unlikable but implausible. And the early buzz on Friends with Money mostly focused on Us Weekly's favorite former Friend, Miss Jennifer Aniston, who's lately wallowed in such a batch of ubercrap features (Derailed, Rumor Has It) that it wasn't clear if her cloud of martyrdom would extend to this film.

The good news: Friends with Money works. About the friendship between four LA women of varying means, it picks up where Lovely & Amazing leaves off, making its central subject their struggles to live authentically without surrendering fully to pessimism. Its secondary subject, of course, is no small thing, either: how money makes and breaks relationships.

It helps that said friends with money are Frances McDormand, a self-made, successful clothing designer married to a sweet metrosexual who may or may not be genuinely heterosexual; Joan Cusack, an heiress married to a man whose dedication to her is only rivaled by his dedication to her cash; Catherine Keener, a successful screenwriter whose writing and life partner couldn't hate her more; and Aniston, finally living up to the promise she showed in such films as The Good Girl and, yes, I'll say it: Office Space. Like a true second prettiest girl in high school, Aniston shines brightest when she's not expected to shine at all, so she does fine as the former schoolteacher who's been reduced to cleaning rich people's house for a living.

Even when Holofcener flounders, she's always shown a knack for startling details and dialogue, and she's at the top of her form here, armed with a stable of actors more than pleased to sink their fangs into nonsidekick roles. Aniston's cad of a beau tags along to have sex with her as she cleans houses in a French maid's uniform he demands she wear; after, he demands his cut from her pay. McDormand, quivering with indignance, assaults Old Navy clerks for their tiresome lack of manners and goes on a hair-washing strike because "she's just too tired to shampoo." Joan Cusack transcends an arguably underwritten role by smiling brightly and warmly even while she shakes her whole body "no" — a classic example of why she's one of the finest physical actors working today.

Ensemble films have become the single greatest American indie film cliche in the last few years. At best, they pack all the punch of an on-point short story collection. At worst, they smack strongly of a position paper. Friends with Money falls somewhere in the middle. It's no Alice Munro collection, for the strangely uniform interiors drag on the eye, and the plot flatlines near the end. But as a comeback effort, and as a showcase for smart women by a smart woman, it's a welcome examination of a topic still rarely discussed in an era when plastic boobs, herpes, and sexual abuse pass as dinner topics. Money, yes. But, more than that: life beyond cynicism.