Entitled Hollywood royalty can’t cope with the easy life and must resort to drug use.
Directed by Mike Nichols
Screenplay by Carrie Fisher
Based on Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher
With: Meryl Streep as Suzanne Vale, Shirley MacLaine as Doris Mann, Dennis Quaid as Jack Faulkner, Gene Hackman as Lowell Kolchek, Richard Dreyfuss as Dr. Frankenthal, Rob Reiner as Joe Pierce, Mary Wickes as grandma, Conrad Bain as grandpa, Annette Bening as Evelyn Ames, Simon Callow as Simon Asquith
Carrie Fisher’s story is semi-autobiographical in the same sense Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is semi-autobiographical, perhaps even more so. The story is one of acute narcissism, but in defense, I must state Fisher’s stand-in Suzanne Vale is no more self-obsessed than other actors. It may be a personal quality necessary to the craft of acting, but I doubt it, suspecting as I do it is as simple as self-obsessed people find it appealing. (“That’s enough of me talking about me, what do you think of me?” Keep reading and find out).
Carrie Fisher’s screenplay gives us some very witty dialogue. The fine acting by the entire cast makes the characters more appealing than they might otherwise deserve. It’s a real charm offensive.
Suzanne Vale does have an overriding positive quality; she does not blame her drug use on others. No whingeing about a “disease”. No one made her take drugs.
She finds her acting career in jeopardy after a stay in drug rehab. She came close to death after an OD in the time Narcan was not widely available. In order to get motion picture insurance coverage, she agrees to live with her mother. We know what to expect.
Mom, Doris Mann, a day drinker herself, is a talented singer/dancer of the old school whose overbearing personality is enough to make almost anyone want to indulge in opioids. This result of this living arrangement with mom is little more than a reason for the same mother/daughter dialogue repeated over and over. Got it first time we heard it.
We get a break from this with the addition of a Don Juan of the old school, who prompts the usual response from Suzanne as deceived woman. You can almost hear her sing as Kate in Cole Porter’s
“Of all the types I’ve ever met within our democracy/I hate the most the athlete with his manner bold and brassy/He may have hair upon his chest, but sister, so has Lassie/Oh I hate men”
One would have supposed a sadder but wiser girl in a middle-aged Hollywood veteran. It’s the romantic in me.
We come to the final act in a role reversal, family hospital room confrontation. Suzanne has apparently grown-up and taken charge of Mother, who confesses a weakness for wine and vodka.
The end comes on a honky-tonk sound stage with Suzanne at the microphone singing a bang-up version of Shel Silverstein’s I’m Checkin’ Out, making mom proud.
It’s worth the price of admission. Really.
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