"Ricki And The Flash"

I often find that an actor/actress’s lead performance represents a film at least as much as it carries it. While the overall quality of the performance and that of the film are neither necessarily proportional to nor dependent on each other, the former will often be a kind of distillation of the latter’s traits; not just the film’s themes and tone, but rather the little things, good and/or bad, that give it a specific identity.

Meryl Streep’s portrayal of a divorcee whose rock star dreams never left the bar in Ricki And The Flash is one such performance. Its occasional flourishes, semi-fulfilled promises and questionable notes mirror the film’s uneasy tonal changes and narrative compromises, but the earnestness that motivates them is such that they also prevent both from being disappointments.

Directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Diablo Cody, Ricki And The Flash bears both creator’s hallmarks for better and for worse. Its plot and structure resemble those of Young Adult with a touch of Rachel Getting Married: A female protagonist with multiple unresolved personal issues returns to a hometown that has moved on without her and finds that she is no longer wanted. But whereas Young Adult was a cynical tale of successful upward social mobility, whose dark comedic value rested mainly on the dissonance between its anti-heroine’s delusions and the plain reality, Ricki And The Flash is a more traditional bittersweet crowd-pleaser: Unlike Mavis’s desperate attempt at stealing her happily married ex-boyfriend back, which viewers knew as a lost cause from the get-go, there are hints of lingering attraction between Ricki/Linda and her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) but Cody and Demme explore that idea just far enough to reveal a modicum of pain without making too many people in the audience uncomfortable. The character who really cares for the anti-heroine and serves as a voice of reason – brilliantly played in Young Adult by Patton Oswalt as a mirror image of its protagonist – actually manages to help her get back on track and be her boyfriend. By the film’s conclusion, Linda has managed to reintegrate her family unit and it all ends with a dance party.

In summary, Ricki And The Flash attempts to cross the kind of snarky domestic dramedy typically aimed at teenagers and young adults with a feel-good redemption story adult families can enjoy, and for the most part it succeeds. Diablo Cody’s customary biting repartee and semi-orthodox social observations (the Linda/Ricki contradiction is personified by her right-leaning libertarian politics contrasting with the abandonment of her Midwestern American nuclear family) bring cathartic laughter while defusing any discomfort caused by the topics at hand. Tension is relieved through familiar techniques that include catty maternal insults to the man who broke her daughter’s heart and the requisite “In Marijuana Veritas” scene so typical of modern middle-class-set comedies.

All fairly well-marked territory, but saved from the clutches of triteness and overt sentimentalism by a balanced screenplay and Meryl Streep’s aforementioned lead performance. Streep has received criticism in recent years for what some perceive to be calculated, over-mannered performances, and it’s not entirely without merit. Like many actors of her generation, her performances are rarely bad but it has become equally rare to see her do something new and unexpected with a role. As Linda, a person who is only in her element when performing on stage as Ricki, she occasionally exaggerates a movement or infection more than she should and sometimes gives the impression of holding back from exposing too much of herself, yet there is not a second where her commitment is in doubt. Correcting Mamma Mia’s false notes, Streep makes Linda’s arrested development look as much a disguise as her lad-ette persona, lending an undercurrent of pathos in her more histrionic moments that feel more genuine than they might have otherwise. Like Cody’s script, she may not be as much herself as a more daring project would have allowed her to be, but she manages to make the necessary concessions without losing herself in the process.

The other real star of the film, of course, is Streep’s real-life daughter Mamie Gummer as Linda’s suicidal freshly-dumped daughter. The role of the sarcastic sick person is one that has been pummeled to death by countless hipster pseudo-indie impostures like Garden State and The Fault In Our Stars, but Gummer carries out each snappy one-liner with imploded pain that makes the early pre-conclusion of her character arc all the more underwhelming.

Indeed, the film’s second half, with its inspirational pep talk, happy musical sequences and bourgeois-bohemian wedding (vegan food, seed paper cards) that recalls the titular multicultural wedding of Rachel Getting Married brings on the happy feelings with an industrial efficiency that, at times, make it look like Jonathan Demme seamlessly edited two short films starring the same protagonist together. While not jarring, the shift in tone cannot help but remind the viewer of how relatively little time he has spent getting to know this family and its baggage.

While not as honest as Rachel Getting Married nor as astute as Young Adult, Ricki And The Flash is a heartfelt little film that settles for above-average likeability with adroitness. It would have benefitted from further exploration of its secondary characters’ perspective on the situation – as well as fewer zooms/forward tracking shots of a character’s face/torso when faced with an important/dramatic moment – but like Meryl Streep, it dares just enough to let the viewer leave with the satisfaction of not having wasted their time.