Postcards From The Edge

Mike Nichols who directed Meryl Streep in Silkwood (1983) and Heartburn (1986) re-teams with her for this sanitizied account of a pill-popping Hollywood actress, Suzanne Vale, and her relationship with her show-biz mother (Shirley MacLaine),

Based on actress Carrie Fisher's confessional novel there is presumably a good-deal of first-hand experience behind the story but whatever home truths may have been revealed there they have been comprehensively air-brushed out here. So off-hand is the depiction of drug-dependency that it takes a while to grasp that the film actually has some aspiration to be taken seriously in this department. Partly this is due to Fisher’s by-numbers script, part to Nichols' middle-of-the-road direction, part to the characteristically tacky late '80s Hollywood production values.

If Streep has little ability to convince as a pill-popper, or for that matter a pill-popper on the wagon, she and the film get a lot better once they get onto the relationship between her and Mommie Dearest. MacLaine does her usual schtick, a mixture of gaily disarming candour and crotchety ill-humour, which may be familiar but is always watchable. Frances (1982), this is not but at least the mother-daughter banter gives the film some spark. Combined with a spot-the-actor cast list including cameos from Rob Reiner, Gene Hackman, Richard Dreyfuss, C.C.H. Pounder and Annette Bening Postcards From The Edge is the sort of fare one might expect as a free-to-air midday movie – a filler-in slotted between ads for household cleaning and personal hygiene products.

DVD Extras:  Audio Commentary by Carrie Fisher; Talent Profiles

Available from: Umbrella Entertainment

 

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