Plenty

Rarely does one see a film with so many talented people involved that is so completely wrong-headed. Even the glorious Meryl Streep cannot save it. Indeed she can barely save herself (and it is the only film I can think of in which she does sex scenes).

The main problem is the laborious script by David Hare based on his own play. Hare is a didactic writer with a strong bent towards socio-political commentary, When he’s writing about the British sensibility or the Suez crisis he’s on the money and the best scenes are those with Ian McKellen and Sir John Gielgud.. When he’s writing melodrama he’s completely off it.

Streep plays Susan Traherne, a head-strong woman and Plenty is supposedly her story from when we first encounter her as a Resistance fighter in WWII up to the 1960s. The aim seems to be a kind of epic saga of a passionate life à la Out Of Africa (a film which was also released in 1985) but it never gets beyond a series of mystifyingly elliptical episodes connected by little more than Streep’s acting now this way, now that in what might be passion or mental and emotional instability or all three combined. Sam Neill, Charles Dance and Sting, dutifully step up to the plate, the latter having a particularly bad time of it. And why Tracy Ullman is attached to to Streep's character as her best buddy is anyone’s guess. It is hard to believe that a fine director like Schepisi could have delivered or even attached his name to such a dog’s dinner of a film.

 

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