Mark Reviews Movies: LET THEM ALL TALK

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 9, 2020

A famous author, her two friends, and her nephew make a week-long crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on a luxury liner in Let Them All Talk. It all feels like a bit of a lark from director Steven Soderbergh. There is, thankfully, a bit more meat to this material.

It's playful, too, which might be a reason to look at this film a bit skeptically. Indeed, a cynical person might look at the movie as an excuse for the filmmakers and cast to live it up on a grand ship. Is the story thin? It is. Does it sometimes feel as if the actors are just being filmed having fun, enjoying the food and drinks, and taking in the atmosphere of the ship and the sights of the ocean, while offering some basic dialogue about their characters and the general thrust of the story? It certainly feels that way, too.

Is that a bad thing, though? Here, we have veterans Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, and Candice Bergen as the three friends, who have known each other since college and are trying to figure out the current status of their friendships, and we also have Lucas Hedges, as the nephew, and Gemma Chan, as the author's agent, tagging along for the voyage—the agent as a kind of stowaway among the party—and having their own fun, little drama, too.

If it's funny and filled with actors just being natural and charming, does a movie really have to be more than that? "Simple" isn't a critique in this case. It's the entire reason for the film's existence and the main source of why it's entertaining.

Streep plays Alice, a well-regarded author, living in New York City, who is about to receive a prestigious award in London. There's one problem: She can't or won't fly. Karen (Chan), Alice's new agent, proposes a solution: She can book the author a free trip on the Queen Mary 2. All she'll have to do is give a little talk for the other passengers, and she can take a few people along for the trip.

Her friends/co-travelers are Roberta (Bergen), currently working at a lingerie store in Texas, and Susan (Wiest), a widowed lawyer who has some—but not a lot of—free time. The fourth member of the party is Alice's trusted and beloved nephew Tyler (Hedges), whose troubled childhood brought the two closer together. Karen is aboard, too, staying incognito and trying to find the right time to talk to Alice about the book her client is currently writing. The agent hopes that it's a sequel to her most successful novel—also the one Alice likes the least.

To get the backdrop out of the way, yes, the film was shot aboard the Queen Mary 2 on one of its regular voyages, and, also yes, it's obvious why the British cruise line that owns and operates the ship would let the filmmakers have such easy and complete access to it. If the story were any lighter, one could be tempted to call the film an extended advertisement for the ocean liner, which looks as appealing as all the money that had to have been put into designing and decorating it.

Soderbergh, once again serving as his own cinematographer (as well as his own editor), captures everything in natural light—the sun shining through the windows or upon the decks and the mood lighting illuminating the bars and clubs of the ship's night life. The film was clearly made on the quick and cheap (probably on account of the little time and limited resources the filmmaker had for the real-life trek), but when the scenery is this good, who needs a budget for anything else?

The story, the characters, the relationships, and the performances, though, are enough that the ship itself doesn't become too much of a distraction. Screenwriter Deborah Eisenberg starts and ends with Alice—her larger-than-life personality, her big ego, her persnickety way of working, her almost absent-minded regard for those around her. The conflicts surrounding her are straightforward.

Alice wants to work, but something is preventing her from concentrating. Susan and Roberta want to spend time with their old friend, for completely different reasons. Susan just wants her friendship, but Roberta, who is convinced that a character in one of Alice's books was based on her and ruined her own life, wants something more. Alice says she's too busy to just wander around the ship with her friends, but that doesn't stop her from wandering around the ship on her own. Karen enlists Tyler to get some information on Alice's schedule or, better, the content of her manuscript, and the nephew finds himself instantly and progressively more attracted to the agent.

The tone here plays like a comedic mystery (Aboard the ship, there's even a more famous mystery novelist, played by filmmaker Daniel Algrant, whom Alice first disregards—until he pays her a few compliments), as the goal Roberta's plan comes into focus and Tyler starts noticing an enigmatic man (played by John Douglas Thompson) who seems to paying his aunt some clandestine attention. The friends' history, Tyler and Karen's relationship, and Alice's own issues are gradually and, then, finally revealed.

We watch and are invested in the film, though, because the actors play the material so well and because Soderbergh keeps his attention on these characters, despite the obvious potential diversions. Let Them All Talk feels like an intriguing experiment—how much can Soderbergh get away with, using only a camera, a beautiful piece of scenery, and some great actors. The answer is more than one might think.

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