After a coolly received Laundry, Steven Soderbergh returns with another movie starring Meryl Streep. How does Let them talk? Read my review.
Alice Hughes (Meryl Streep) is an acclaimed writer with a Pulitzer Prize to her account. Its publisher has long been waiting for another work, but the author somehow is unable to finish it. He struggles with an internal blockage. Her agent Karen (Gemma Chan) comes up with the idea of her going to the UK, where she will receive the prestigious Footling Award. The woman believes that the transatlantic journey of a writer who cannot fly will help her find inspiration to finish her novel. On the cruise, she will be accompanied by two friends from her student days, Barbara (Candice Bergen) and Susan (Dianne Wiest), with whom the writer has had very sporadic contact. There is a conflict among female friends that they don't want to speak out about. A cruise together can solve a problem that has been growing over the years, and thus help Alice deal with her lack of inspiration.
The characters in Let them talk are by no means the ones that immediately win the hearts of the audience. They are very selfish people, but to varying degrees. For example, such Alice invites her friends for a free trip, but immediately says that there is no time for them, because she is writing a new novel. When he meets with them for joint dinners, instead of talking he conducts a monologue about his own work and the misery of the world-famous writer. She hates the lack of admiration from her colleagues who inform her that there is a writer on board with much more output than she is, but without a Pulitzer. Meryl Streep is great for the role of such a diva. She is very natural and convincing in her play. It evokes admiration and aversion. Candice Bergen is a great partner for her as Roberta - a woman who cannot come to terms with the fact that her good years are behind her and is not at the point in her life where she planned to be. The frustration about this is so great that it rises over the viewer in every scene. We feel angry with this character and even understand a little. Who among us does not have a vision of ourselves in the future and hope that it will come true?
Let them talk very far away from the best Soderbergh works like Traffic, Erin Brockovich, the Given Ocean trilogy or even Logan Lucky. Rather, it is a story to be seen and forgotten once. We will have a nice time with it, but we will forget about it quickly. It saddens me a bit, because I had one at the Laundry. Maybe if it were a different director, it would be enough for me, but I expect a much better cinema from Soderbergh.