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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘The Meddler’ (M) ***

the meddler movieWRITER/director Lorene Scafaria’s film about the relationship between a widow and her unmarried adult daughter has a predominantly female cast, without conforming to the conventional notion of a chick flick.

Information available about Ms Scafaria suggests that major themes in the screenplay for “The Meddler” reflect her own life. Yes, “life imitating art” is a well-worn cliché, but in this case, it’s sensitively developed, agreeably combining viewer frustrations with the comfort that comes from watching a fiction that doesn’t hold back on credibility.

Susan Sarandon plays Marnie, left well-provided for in New York by her late Italo-American husband; Rose Byrne plays her daughter trying to carve herself a career in Los Angeles writing drama for TV series and JK Simmons plays retired cop Zipper. There’s also an old lady lying mutely in a hospital bed whose purpose in the story takes a fair while to come to its explanation, which turns out to be very worthwhile in a poignant way.

Looking delightful, Ms Sarandon handles with consummate ease a role encompassing a wide emotional range, well-stocked with comic moments, making demands on our sympathy simultaneously with making us wish she’d quickly do something about her propensity for interfering with other people’s lives, yet reflecting a credibility that most people might recognise.

Rose Byrne, yet another Australian leading lady seduced by Hollywood, gives a workwoman-like portrayal of someone doing the best she can with leading her own life as she and not her mother wishes.

JK Simmons has had a long and varied career in cinema and TV series. Here he’s the romantic lead and, by golly, he does it well. The nicely-rounded set of behaviours that Scafaria has provided him with invite us to feel good about him.

And all those other women? They could be the housewife next door, your workmate’s sister or the lady behind the shop counter. Bear with them. They provide the story with a garnish that it might not work so well without.

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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