Postcards from the Edge

Despite there only being fifteen years between them, I actually thought that Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep made the mother/daughter thing work quite well here. The former, "Doris", is a wealthy and accomplished singer; the latter, "Suzanne", is a successful actress with dependency issues. Indeed they both have those - mum with the booze and her child with the pills. It's on the set of her latest film that director "Lowell" (Gene Hackman) lovingly loses the plot with his charge and makes it clear that she'd better clean her act up, else she'll be doing daytime medical soaps. Her insurers will only agree to take her on if she moves in with her mum - not knowing, of course, that she has a penchant for her kale smoothies the Mr. Smirnoff way. Now compelled to live together, what now ensues is a latter-day coming of age enterprise for both women as they face up to their demons and their causes, whilst hopefully not actually killing each other. Meantime, the mischievous womaniser "Jack" (Dennis Quaid) is stringing "Suzanne" along nicely with talk of love and devotion - but it's surely only a matter of time before she realises he's full of sheep dip too. The story has an authentic ring of truth to it - doubtless because author Carrie Fisher has plenty of skin in this game, but for me the best two scenes had precious little to do with the plot and featured both Streep at the microphone followed by her on-screen mother letting rip in a glitzy red frock to Sondheim's "I'm Still Here". As you'd expect, MacLaine also has the better of the pithy and often quite close to the bone dialogue but Streep isn't left out and if this were to be a critique on a Fisher/Reynolds family relationship then it's generally quite a funny and enjoyable one.