Postcards from the Edge (1990)

One great movie!

Streep and Maclaine are outstandingly hilarious as mother and daughter. Both these actresses also show off their vocal talents and Streep is obviously talented enough to have succeeded entirely on her singing. August 27, 2008

Mother-Daughter Tensions Overshadow the Drugs in Carrie Fisher's Sharp-Tongued Hollywood Tale

Carrie Fisher's bracingly candid and acerbically amusing commentary is definitely worth a listen when you watch this scabrous 1990 comedy, especially since she wrote the screenplay based on her first novel, which is turn, was based on her life as a drug-addicted movie actress who happens to be the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. With the self-assured Mike Nichols at the helm, the picture is glossy and often smug in its insider's look of Hollywood, but it also has an emotionally resonant quality thanks mainly to the shrewdly observant interplay between Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine as mother and daughter. Streep plays Suzanne Vale, an actress successful enough to star in a cheesy action flick but spiraling out of control with her drug habit. In fact, she barely finishes a film for veteran director Lowell Korshack (an initially snappish Gene Hackman) who reads her the riot act on the set about her budget-escalating addiction.

In the midst of a bleary-eyed one-night-stand, Suzanne becomes comatose from an overdose and is taken to the hospital where she gets her stomach pumped by a smitten doctor (a puppyish Richard Dreyfuss). She recovers and can work on her next picture only if she will live with her movie star mother Doris Mann to appease the insurance company. While the rest of the movie focuses on Suzanne's bumpy road toward recovery, the story really takes flight when it zeroes in on the prickly, dysfunctional relationship she has with Doris, a larger-than-life personality who means well as a mother but can't help being judgmental and competitive. Whether showing off her gams on a piano belting out Sondheim's "I'm Still Here" or revealing her pathetically shorn head after an auto collision, MacLaine is spot-on in the role, probably the best among her latter-day performances after Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment.

Liberated from her parade of accents and period costumes, Streep seems at first too accomplished to be playing a second-rate actress, but she makes the bedraggled Suzanne likeably flawed. She also shows off an impressive singing voice with a couple of country-western numbers. Beyond Hackman and Dreyfuss, Dennis Quaid effectively plays an errant lover with smarmy panache, and there are nice near-cameos from Annette Bening as a flaky actress, Gary Morton as Suzanne's agent, Robin Bartlett as Suzanne's sardonic rehab roommate, CCH Pounder as an unctuous rehab counselor and Simon Callow as a two-faced director. In the studio scenes, Rob Reiner, Oliver Platt, Michael Ontkean and J.D. Souther provide even smaller bits. I just wish Fisher could have explored Suzanne's recovery beyond the fatherly pep talk from Korshack and the final moment of vulnerability from Doris. Beyond Fisher's commentary, the 2001 DVD contains partial filmographies for the principal players and several unrelated trailers. April 11, 2008

I simply love Meryl Streep, perhaps the greatest living actress of our time.

Having just seen 'The Devil Wears Prada' for the umpteenth time in the last several months and not just to see Anne Hathaway...I have become transfixed with Meryl Streep's acting ability and the level of perfection and style that she brings to the screen.

I know that everyone has written their review and given their spin on this being a 'Hollywood Insider' film and it may very well be one. I too can relate to Suzanne Vale's travails; her dependency on drugs, the struggle with her relationship with her mother and with her career.

BUT, I do not think that this movie is so much about any of that or even about the obvious...what I do say the movie is about is the dialectic of 'Becoming vs. Being'.

I'm not going to explain what I mean by that and I'm sure that the mature and savvy readers who ponder my humble words will know what I mean...but there is one line that everyone has overlooked...the 'Tell' (for me) so to speak and that is when Suzanne is embracing Gene Hackman in a nearly Father and Daughter dialog when she mutters...'I don't want life to imitate art...I want life to be art.' WOW!!!

Perhaps it is the very high expectations that Suzanne places on herself and in the quest for full self expression within the dynamics of living in the Umbra of her mother that drives her to drug dependency and is the source of her deep rooted unhappiness...

Having spoken those words which segue shortly to the last scene of the film as Suzanne delivers a rousing rendition of Heartbreak Hotel there is no line of distinction in her performance between her life as an actress and her passion for her life and her craft fully self expressed, becoming no more.

At that moment I dropped a tear or two.

February 3, 2008

Balancing act between comedy & drama mostly succeeds

An actress's (Meryl Streep) recovery from drug addiction is complicated by her difficult, competitive relationship with her mother (Shirley MacClaine), a maintenance alcoholic and former star who misses the limelight. Based on Carrie Fisher's autobiographical novel, this film attempts a careful balance between comedy and drama and mostly succeeds. Although it gives short shrift to the seriousness of drug dependence, the comedy is genuinely funny in the capable hands of Streep and (especially) MacClaine. The ending is too tidy for its own good, but this film remains a funny comedy with glimpses of what could have been a searing drama. October 7, 2007

Wow

It takes a pretty spectacular person to take a difficult childhood, drug addictions, and relationships gone wrong, and turn all that into a screenplay that is funny and witty. That's exactly what Carrie Fisher did in Postcards from the Edge, a must-see movie. And don't miss Fisher's comments in the DVD, in which she shows how witty and brutally honest she is. September 23, 2007

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