As the mum who didn't show up for her daughter's wedding then
arrived in time for the divorce, Ricki Randazzo (Meryl Streep) could expect children
to have a few issues with her. When she comes back into their lives, they're all
grown up. Can she reach them still?
Back home in Tarzana, California, where she moonlights as
lead singer with her band, she has a knack for working a crowd. The patrons at her
regular gig are an appreciative lot, cheering on the mix of Springsteen, Stones
and Pink. And you have got to hand it to Streep as she prowls the stage and
lets rip with a dirty chuckle. She looks and sounds like she's been strapped to
a guitar all her life.
Ricki is an endearing reminder of free-wheeling times past, even
if her politics don't fit. In an aside she mentions she voted for George W. Bush—twice.
Give her back the good old days, when going through security checks at the
airport didn't mean you had to remove all your chunky necklaces and rings, and people
didn't look sideways at you in your barely tamed hair and hippie weeds.
Responding to a call from her former husband Pete (Kevin
Kline) that their daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep's daughter in real life)
has attempted suicide after her husband left her, Ricki makes the journey to be
by her side. The tidy hedges and gated communities of Indianapolis where
Ricki's ex lives with his new wife, is a foreign country until she bonds with
the family poodle and spies some pot in the freezer.
It's not as though Ricki doesn't carry her share of maternal
guilt for having deserted her children when they were little, just a lot less
than most. The drama makes way for this to be beautifully expressed in her
performance of 'Cold One', a song she wrote and sings to Pete and Julia one
evening, before stepmom Maureen (Audra McDonald) returns home after a few days
away.
We've known since Postcards
from the Edge that she could sing and since Mamma Mia! that she could groove, but here she is quite the Linda
Ronstadt or the Chrissie Hynde. One of the screen's gifted chameleons—think Iron Lady, Evil Angels, and The French Lieutenant's Woman—Streep is,
as always, utterly convincing as an aging rocker. Having established her credentials
in serious roles, she can afford to let her hair down.
The screenplay is the work of esteemed creatives behind the
camera too, the talented writer Diablo Cody (Juno, and episodes of TV's United
States of Tara) and director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia and The Manchurian Candidate).
There is a big singing and dancing finale. It is, after all,
a wedding reception, and as such a gesture of hope towards the future, however Ricki and the Flash could have done with
a brisker wrap. We've seen that Demme has a soft spot for Neil Young, and music
is perhaps his indulgence, but contemporary audiences have a low tolerance for
things being drawn-out or for a great deal of sentiment in their melodrama
either.
It's worth remembering, however, that we tend to allow
Bollywood the same indulgence in the big singing and dancing wrap, and anyone
knows that the relationship difficulties aren't usually resolved on the dance
floor. So enjoy.
Also published online at www.janefreeburywriter.com.au
