“When I read a bad review it generally feels like that person is really stupid and didn’t understand my movie,” said Nicole Holofcener, writer/director of “Lovely & Amazing.”

“And I don’t know if that’s narcissistic on my part or what. These characters are supposed to be self-obsessed. They’re supposed to be tedious. If that is all you see, then maybe you will be bored and maybe you will hate them. It’s not like I made the movie thinking these are the most fascinating, healthy girls.”

Indeed, “Lovely & Amazing” is hardly the typical “chick flick,” despite its female-driven subject matter. As critic Roger Ebert (who gave it a four-star review) wrote, “Here is a movie that knows its women, listens to them, doesn’t give them a pass, allows them to be real: It’s a rebuke to the shallow ‘Ya-Ya Sisterhood.'”

“I bet Callie Khouri would like to kill me,” Holofcener said of “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” director. “Although her movie probably made 5,000 times the amount that mine will ever make, so she’s probably not that mad. I didn’t ask for that comparison, and I think those are strange compliments because they’re inadvertently putting down other kinds of movies. That’s a different film!”

“Lovely & Amazing” is the story of the Marks sisters. The oldest sibling Michelle (Catherine Keener) is a stay-at-home mom whose frosty marriage leaves her yearning to do something else  just as soon as she can get motivated. Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) is a working actress who is preoccupied with her physical appearance. The youngest, Annie (Raven Goodwin), is a recently adopted 8-year-old African American whose struggle to fit in with her new family is eclipsed by her weight problem.

Not surprisingly, Holofcener drew on her own family when crafting many of these indelible characters.

“A lot of the experiences were biographical or at least very personal to me in theme,” she said. “I have a black 12-year-old brother. My experience with him and what I imagine is his experience growing up with us inspired that character  how foreign he might feel or how different. It’s so interesting to wonder what he’s going to glean from us, good and bad.”

Finding the right actress to play the key role of Annie proved Holofcener’s most challenging task.

“I was accosting children at the playground,” she said. “I was really desperate. Any child that was black and overweight was a potential actress, even if she didn’t know how to read. I so badly wanted the right-looking person, and hadn’t found her until I found Raven.”

Since Holofcener’s previous projects had little to do with kids, she found it unusual involving the Maryland-based fourth grader with what is fundamentally an adult-themed film.

“It’s very strange,” she said, while talking on her mobile phone as she motored around Los Angeles. “I always wondered how other people dealt with that. I don’t think Raven understood a lot of the adult issues, and I didn’t try to explain them to her. Here I am this white woman directing this black girl about what it would be like to be a crack addict’s daughter. But I didn’t pretend to know anything I didn’t know. So I thought that as long as I didn’t try to answer anything, I can’t be criticized for trying to know anything.”

The body-appraising controversy

One area where Holofcener HAS been criticized is in a much-talked about scene involving Mortimer and a vain movie star played by Dermot Mulroney. In it, Mortimer’s self-obsessed character asks the Hollywood insider with whom she’s just spent the night to critique her seemingly perfect body. She stands naked before him while he reveals in uncomfortable detail what he perceives as her “shortcomings.”

Many have dubbed it the most memorable scene of the year  an example of dramatic bravery that will surely nab Mortimer an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actress  while others have vilified it as a phenomenally sexist moment of cinema.

“The scene is pretty much the way it is, but I wrote it for someone who had a much more flawed body,” Holofcener confessed. “I probably wrote it with my own body in mind  you know, there are good points and not-so-good points. And when I cast Emily I was concerned about how perfect she was, but I realized that will just make her seem more crazy, and that’s OK. She’s even crazier if nothing moves on her upper arms when she has such an exquisite body and she’s still worried that they’re flabby. I think that’s a reality, and a lot of actresses who are that gorgeous are still incredibly insecure.

Holofcener originally outlined the scene then tailored it to Mortimer’s physique.

“I said, ‘What would somebody say to you?’ And she started listing the things that she felt self-conscious about. I added some stuff  much to her dismay  like that her breasts were uneven. She said, ‘They are?’ And I said, ‘Oh God, I’m worse than anybody in the movie.'”

On-the-job training

New York City native Holofcener first became immersed in the film industry while at Columbia University. While in school she landed the job of a production assistant on Woody Allen’s “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy,” and eventually served as an apprentice film editor on the director’s Oscar-winning “Hannah and Her Sisters.”

What did she learn from collaborating with the Woodman?

“Um … nothing,” she laughed. “I actually learned more from watching his movies, because the capacity in which I worked with him did not enable me to truly learn anything. Now that’s not completely true, because I sunk the dailies for ‘Hannah and Her Sisters.’ So I was able to watch all the takes, the variations, how the camera moved. But generally I was so removed from him that I learned more by watching ‘Stardust Memories’ 50 times just like anybody else.”

Upon graduating, Holofcener wrote the romantic comedy “Walking and Talking” (also starring Keener), which she turned into her feature directorial debut in 1996. Since then, the 42-year-old has helmed episodes of the Emmy-winning series “Sex and the City” for HBO, as well as “Gilmore Girls” for the WB and “Leap of Faith” for NBC.

So if Holofcener were to ask people to judge her directorial skills  similar to what Mortimer’s character had to go through in “Lovely & Amazing”  what might they say?

“I need to be more patient and less impulsive,” she speculated. “It’s not that bad, but I’m sure I have plenty of things to learn.”