Title: Let Them All Talk

Year: 2020

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director/Cinematography/Editing: Steven Soderbergh

Screenwriter: Deborah Eisenberg

Music: Thomas Newman

Cast:

Meryl Streep

Dianne Wiest

Candice Bergen

Lucas Hedges

Gemma Chan

Daniel Algrant

John Douglas Thompson

Christopher Fitzgerald

David Siegel

Rating: 6.6/10

Every year, like a broken record, we bemoan that there is not enough juicy roles for elderly actresses, now a corrective comes about, Steven Soderbergh’s LET THEM ALL TALK, a star vehicle for Meryl Streep, who, beyond any shadow of doubt, is high and above the aforementioned grievance, elicits our rejoice in offering two meaty parts to her coevals, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen, who have been years in the doldrums and the former is a two-times Oscar winner for that matter!

Making the most of the economy and practicality of filmmaking, LET THEM ALL TALK is reportedly shot just in 2 weeks, and mostly takes place on board the transatlantic ocean liner Queen Mary 2, lensed through natural light and lighting (and Soderbergh the cinematographer well excels in capturing splendor with limited resources). Streep plays a renowned author Alice Hughes, who voyages from USA to UK to receive a prestigious literature award. Her modest entourage includes her nephew Tyler (Hedges), and two university friends Susan and Roberta (Wiest and Bergen respectively), whom she hasn’t seen for 3 decades.

Most of the time, the film postures as a slo-paced guessing game on a lavish cruise ship: what is the intention of Alice’s arrangement of such a belated reunion? What is Roberta’s ulterior motive after we are told her marriage and life crumples because Alice writes her seminal novel by appropriating the former’s personal stories. Or, is Susan the amicable buffer like she leads us to believe? Soderbergh takes his own sweet time to dole out those answers: some are quite expected, like Roberta will seize on any opportunity to get some sort of financial compensation; some are less obvious, Alice might have her own self-serving agenda for the occasion, fishing material for her work-in-progress; some are more opaque, like Susan’s ambiguity and what her wild past attributes to the trio’s erstwhile friendship, or by extension to the ultimate falling-out?

On the strength of the trio thespians - though Hedges and Chan, the latter as Alice’s beguilingly manipulative agent Karen, gingerly but exquisitely dance a mislead thrill-of-the-chase pas de deux - and since Deborah Eisenberg’s prosaic script only purveys a backbone of the story, the players are allowed to act impromptu, LET THEM ALL TALK seems to be totally luxuriating in gathering these three septuagenarians in the same table and letting tensions, astonishment, discomfiture and superficial pleasantries mount, fuse and mutate into a intangible mess, so much so that, we don’t know whom we should root for.

Streep chooses a minimalistic mannerism that keeps a lid on Alice’s emotionality, most of the time, to represent an acclaimed intellectual who demands total autonomy but also ponders upon morality and her legacy, it is an effective, but shy of satisfactory performance, simply because we are always biased to want more from her, that is the burden in the wake of reaping 21 Oscar nominations. As for Wiest and Bergen, the former settles in a cerebral comfort zone whereas the latter who takes a go-for-it motto to distinction, Roberta is so rankled that she is almost shamelessly acquisitive, and Bergen makes sure no one takes her for granted!

Alice is trying to “catching lightning in a bottle for a second time”, but for Soderbergh, he might just as well go all his way to avoid that, the movie sustains a loosey-goosey unwieldiness that is far from cinematic, mired in its specific locality and faux-documentary banality. Plus the hazard of watching a movie about elderly people is that quietus can sneak in at any moment, once that is bedded in, you are in for a downer that almost obliterates all the intrigues and revelations, oh, dear Alice, why bother?

referential entries: Soderbergh’s MAGIC MIKE (2012, 7.2/10); Nancy Meyers’ IT’S COMPLICATED (2009, 6.0/10).