Word: streep
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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CATAPULTING HERSELF into the role of paranoid-schizophrenic idealist Susan Brock, Meryl Streep electrifies the screen in Fred Schepisi's otherwise disappointing Plenty. Adapted from the London stage play by David Hare, Plenty chronicles the disillusionment of a young English woman, played by Streep, who cannot come to grips with an imperfect world after actively serving in the French Resistance during World War II. Haunted by the fear that mankind has failed to "grow up" after the Holocaust, Susan sets out on a masochistic mission of self-destruction, punishing herself as a representative member of an unfeeling generation that needs...
Schepisi's inexperience as a director complicates his handling of Streep's character, Susan Brock. Because she is so complex and passes through so many psychological metamorphoses, the audience needs some assistance in interpreting her within a single context. Schepisi's direction provides us with no help whatsoever, developing each individual sequence in a creative vacuum wholly severed from the rest of the film...
...fact that Streep and co-stars Sting and Tracey Ullman are able to break through the film's hard crust of mediocrity is a tribute to their collective talent and bravura. Brilliantly manipulating a spectrum of emotions from pastoral innocence to manic depression to pulsating sexuality, Streep may very well clinch the third Oscar of her career as the little--lost--activist. Once again, her most appealing characteristic is her chameleon-like control of facial expression. In one of the film's most fleeting but poignant moments (and probably the only one in which Baker's off-the-wall pacing...
Running a close second to Streep in talent are rock singers Tracey Ullman and Sting, proving that the movie musical is by no means the only avenue open to today's talented musical celebrities. As Susan's unlikely bohemian sidekick Alice, Ullman provides the film with some strongly needed comic relief. Her entrance on screen is a treasure; waltzing into the office decked out in a man's pinstriped suit, she silences her employer's huffy outburst at her appearance, by remarking "Imagine what my boyfriend's boss is saying right now." Hare balances Alice's bohemianism with Susan...
...short, despite some fine performances by Streep, Ullman and Sting, Plenty is the fall season's most bitter disappointment. Had Schepisi and Hare been willing to sacrifice the artsy elements in favour of a more straightforward, biographical format, Plenty would have been more than enough...