adriennemay Spoiled right from the start, from scene one but when our heroine decides to have a histrionic fit while hiding from a German patrol, I quickly lost interest.This inattention to detail in the interest of character development, is just poor direction. So she was frightened, would we not all be? But would one give oneself away by having a sudden fit of histrionics, speaking loudly, speaking at all in a high pitched voice while hiding in a ditch from the enemy? I think not. If that is what she was like, she was clearly in the wrong occupation and should never have reached within a hundred miles of occupied France. It killed the movie for me.The heroines of the resistance probably emerged from their extremely dangerous occupation bearing lasting scars, but while there they were valiant, sensible to the risks, fearful. They did not howl in fear while German's were in earshot.A good deal of the dialogue is stilted, unreal. The addition of Sting, a great mistake. It needed an actor not a rock star. All in all the next worst Meryl Streep film to Mama Mia.

jzappa This much-overlooked British drama opens with, literally fades in on, her days in WWII France. It follows her through the next 15 or 20 years, and ends with an aching scene from a past day when she thought tomorrow seizes nothing but good things for her. But nothing else in her life is ever as valuable, as dignifying or as exciting as the war. She is, maybe, a little insane. She divulges in one scene that she has a considerable issue: "Sometimes I like to lose control." Fred Schepisi's obscure film stars Meryl Streep and it is a performance of daring delicacy. It is hard to play an irrational, maladjusted, quasi-suicidal woman with such tenderness or grace. She is oftentimes quite charming to be around for the other characters, and when she is letting herself fall short of restraint, she doesn't do it in the vein of those exclusive movie frenzy scenes but with a relatively pleasant imperativeness. When she returns to England after the war, she makes friends with a round-faced, grinning imp played by a refreshing Tracey Ullmann. Another is Charles Dance's foreign service officer who is initially charmed by her casual, free-spirited lifestyle, and then marries her and becomes her permanent aggrandizer, putting up a barricade of composure and practically divine patience around her tantrums. It is challenging to pigeonhole specifically what it is that disturbs Streep's character. Early on, David Hare's screenplay shepherds us to her own heuristic that after the valor and brazenness of the war, after the gallantry and the passion, it is beyond absurd to her to readjust back to normal life and endure the tedious small talk of civil commonality. Yet as the film proceeds in a clandestine manner of being episodic, we find there is something persistent, a little vicious, in the way she humiliates her husband at crucial times, constantly seeking to be tactless and incongruous. Ultimately, we gravitate toward his position when he eventually thunders that she is hateful and pitiless, and oblivious to those who have withstood her. But then there is an postlude, moistened by the misty twilight of the most dismal hour of fall, and there is such despondence in the way she and another character both become conscious that nothing will ever graze them again the way the war did. This bit part-filled movie is conclusively not a assertion concerning war, or foreign service, or middle-class British, but just the story of this lost woman who at one time lived profoundly, and now finds that she is barely even living. The performances grant one enthralling solitaire after another. Most of the pivotal instances come as different characters eclipse different scenes. Streep births a complete character around a woman who could have merely been a hit list of problems. Charles Dance has an unrewarding part, as her perpetually agonized husband who from the beginning seems like a very dull bureaucrat, but survives to show that he is respectable as well as foolish. Sting plays a commonplace young man who ineffectively tries to conceive Streep's child for her. John Gielgud has three small scenes and steals them all, which essentially is the story of his career. Plenty is written, acted and directed as a lather of refinement and delicate shrewdness, underneath which grows the revelation that life can often be futile, dull and depressing, and that there can be days, months, years, decades in accordance.

vitaleralphlouis The only opinion I have is my own, and I say that David Hare's PLENTY starring Kate Nelligan was the best Broadway play ever --- and I've seen dozens --- eventually becoming Meryl Streep's best movie.There have been quite a few films that tell of men's difficulty in returning from war unable to fully return home to their mundane life with work and family. In this story, Susan had a truly insignificant role in the French Resistance in World War II; and she briefly had a lover. With the war over, she has a solidly good life in England, married to a fine man, a diplomat, a life with advantages many would envy. IF ONLY... if only she could eradicate her past, if only she could erase her dreams, if only she could find fulfillment in her husband's success rather than her own. Of course many people are shallow enough to do exactly that. Or do they? What secret desires lie in the hearts of each of us? It's easy for the audience to dislike Susan; after all, she pretty well can't stand herself, so why should WE like her, or care about her? Maybe we see a real part of ourselves in her; the part we keep quiet about. Hush! It's my secret. I'd rather you see the smiles.The final few minutes --- which might be real or might be fantasy --- where Susan's long-suppressed dream seems to come full round to reality --- she takes stock of her "fulfillment" drawing the deepest drag on a cigarette, the final expression on her face is inconclusive.What if? What if you could finally cash in your most heartfelt desire? Would you really want the consequence? Think about it!

Pangborne The problem with PLENTY is that the first half is too slow andspends too much time setting up the second half. The long scenein the British Embassy, the "riotous" living with the loose setin Pimlico - these scenes drag on and add little to our understandingof Susan, or, at the very least, are told as though they weremerely necessary and not intrinsically interesting. However, onceshe really starts going off the deep end, about the time she hooksup with Sting, it catches fire, and burns brighter and brighter.The quality of the second half is so strong that it easily nullifiesthe ill-effects of the first half.