Postcards from the Edge is a 1990 American dramedy film directed by Mike Nichols. The screenplay by Carrie Fisher is based on her 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same title.
Plot
Actress Suzanne Vale is a recovering drug addict trying to pick up the pieces of her career and get on with her life after being discharged from a rehab center she entered to kick a cocaine-acid-Percodan habit. When she is ready to return to work, her agent advises her the studio's insurance policy will cover her only if she lives with a "responsible" individual, such as her mother Doris Mann, who was the reigning musical comedy star of the 1950s and '60s. Suzanne is loath to return to the woman she struggled to escape for years after growing up in her shadow. The situation is not helped by the fact Doris is loud, competitive, manipulative, and self-absorbed, given to offering her daughter unsolicited advice and insinuating value judgments while treating her like a child.
Unaware producer Jack Faulkner is the one who drove her to the hospital during her last overdose, Suzanne agrees to go out with him. During the course of a passionate first date, he professes intense and eternal love for her and she believes every word is true, until she learns from Evelyn Ames, a bit player in her latest film, that Jack is sleeping with her as well. Still dressed in the costume she wears as a uniformed cop in the schlock movie, she drives to Jack's house and confronts him. As their argument escalates, he implies she was much more interesting when she was trying to function while under the influence.
At home, Suzanne learns from Doris her sleazy business manager, Marty Wiener, has absconded with all her money, leading to a verbal brawl between the two women, and Suzanne storms out to go to a looping session. There paternalistic director Lowell Korshack tells her he has more work for her as long as she remains clean and sober.
Suzanne arrives home and discovers Doris has crashed her car into a tree after drinking too much wine. She rushes to her hospital bedside, where the two have a heart-to-heart talk while Suzanne fixes her mother's makeup and arranges a scarf on her head to conceal the fact she misplaced her wig in the accident. Looking and feeling better, Doris musters her courage and faces the media waiting for her. Suzanne runs into Dr. Frankenthal, who had pumped her stomach after her last overdose, and he invites her to see a movie with him, but she declines, telling him she's not ready to date yet. Dr. Frankenthal tells her he's willing to wait until she is.
In the film's closing moments, Suzanne performs "I'm Checkin' Out", a foot-stomping Country Western number, for a scene in Lowell Korshack's new film.
Production
In discussing adapting the book for the screen, director Mike Nichols commented, "For quite a long time we pushed pieces around, but then we went with the central story of a mother passing the baton to her daughter." [2] He added, "Carrie doesn't draw on her life any more than Flaubert did. It's just that his life wasn't so well known." [2]
Responding to questions about how closely the film's Suzanne/Doris relationship parallels her relationship with her mother Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher stated, "I wrote about a mother actress and a daughter actress. I'm not shocked that people think it's about me and my mother. It's easier for them to think I have no imagination for language, just a tape recorder with endless batteries." [2] In the DVD commentary, she notes her mother wanted to portray Doris, but Nichols cast Shirley MacLaine instead.
Blue Rodeo accompanied Meryl Streep on "I'm Checkin' Out," which was written by Shel Silverstein. Other songs performed in the film include "I'm Still Here" by Stephen Sondheim and "You Don't Know Me" by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold.
Cast
Jerry Orbach filmed a scene as Suzanne's father, as divulged by writer Carrie Fisher in the DVD commentary, however it was cut.
Critical reception
Vincent Canby of the New York Times said the film "seems to have been a terrifically genial collaboration between the writer and the director, Miss Fisher's tale of odd-ball woe being perfect material for Mr. Nichols's particular ability to discover the humane sensibility within the absurd." [3]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed, "What's disappointing about the movie is that it never really delivers on the subject of recovery from addiction. There are some incomplete, dimly seen, unrealized scenes in the rehab center, and then desultory talk about offscreen AA meetings. But the film is preoccupied with gossip; we're encouraged to wonder how many parallels there are between the Streep and MacLaine characters and their originals, Fisher and Debbie Reynolds . . . Postcards from the Edge contains too much good writing and too many good performances to be a failure, but its heart is not in the right place." [4]
Hal Hinson of the Washington Post said, "Meryl Streep gives the most fully articulated comic performance of her career, the one she's always hinted at and made us hope for." He felt the film's earlier section was "the movie's best, primarily because Nichols is so focused on Streep. In fact, almost nothing else seems to matter to him . . . But while Nichols is servicing his star, he lets the other areas of the film go slack . . . [He] is finely attuned to the natural surreality of a movie set, but when he moves away from the show-biz satire and concentrates on the mother-daughter relationship, the movie falters." [5]
Box office
The film opened in 1,013 theaters in the United States on September 14, 1990 and grossed $7,871,856 on its opening weekend, ranking #1 at the box office. It eventually earned $39,071,603 in the US. [1]
Awards and nominations
- Academy Award for Best Actress (Meryl Streep, nominee)
- Academy Award for Best Song (Shel Silverstein, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Shirley MacLaine, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Carrie Fisher, nominee)
- BAFTA Award for Best Film Music (Carly Simon, nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (Meryl Streep, nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (Shirley MacLaine, nominee)
- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song (Shel Silverstein, nominee)
- American Comedy Award for Funniest Lead Actress in a Motion Picture (Meryl Streep, winner)
- London Critics Circle Film Award for Newcomer of the Year (Annette Bening, winner)
References
External links
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