STREEP SHARES SPOTLIGHT IN VISUALLY PLEASING ‘LET THEM ALL TALK’
Supporting cast strong in meandering story of author and her friends
Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, “Let Them All Talk,” is filled with several not-insignificant pleasures, starting with Meryl Streep as a slightly superior and self-absorbed, Pulitzer-winning author named Alice. On her way from the United States to England aboard the Queen Mary 2 — whose nautical elegance Soderbergh films lovingly, almost like a silent character — Alice is set to receive another award, as she spends the two-week trip working (theoretically) on a new book.
Also on board, secretly: Alice’s literary agent Karen (Gemma Chan), who hopes that the mysterious work-in-progress will be a sequel to the Pulitzer book, although Alice considers that commercial hit less worthy than the rest of her more abstruse oeuvre. Alice’s nephew Tyler (Lucas Hedges), who has become something of a surrogate son to Alice
because of his troubled home life, has been enlisted by Karen to spy on his aunt and find out what she’s writing about. At the same time, Alice has also invited her two oldest friends: Susan (Dianne Wiest) and Roberta (Candice Bergen), the latter of whom served as unauthorized inspira
tion for a character in the Pulitzer novel — a betrayal that is said to have ruined Roberta’s life, and for which Alice seeks to build a bridge, if not gain redemption.
The screenplay — which chews satisfyingly on themes of female friendship, creativity and appropriation, and the generation gap — is credited to shortstory writer Deborah Eisenberg, although the dialogue, reportedly, was largely improvised. If this is not a recipe for a dish for cinephiles to savor, I don’t know what is.
The question is: Is it a meal? Although Streep is, ostensibly, the icy, almost imperious center of this web of congealing connections, the ever-generous actress doesn’t hog the spotlight; Bergen and Wiest are an equal joy to watch, not just in Roberta and Susan’s sometimes prickly interactions, over meals, with their old pal, but in their new friendship with a fellow passenger (Dan Algrant), a popular author of bestselling mysteries. Hedges and Chan, whose characters negotiate an abortive and onesided f lirtation, are excellent as well. (In some ways, it’s Tyler who provides the glue in this loose, exceedingly shaggy dog of a story; Susan also recruits the young man to find out what he can about a shoelace salesman she’s been hitting up in the bar. This makes for a narrative that feels somewhat off-center at times.)
That said, “Let Them All Talk”
has heft, if not heavy meaning, and it leaves a lot hanging. There’s talk at one point about how the Queen Mary 2 must be referred to as a ship — a vessel of substance — and not a boat, and how the trans-Atlantic journey it takes is a crossing, not a cruise. Words matter, in this literary yarn about a writer who, by her own admission, can fuss over a single turn of phrase for a week.
By that measure, “Let Them All Talk” — which wanders, scenically, more than it arrives at a destination — feels closer to a pleasure cruise than a crossing. It takes us someplace, yes, but the trip is just this side of transporting.