To be honest, Jonathan Demme’s “Ricki and The
Flash” sounds supremely bland on paper and looked even worse in the trailers.
Meryl Streep plays Linda Brummel aka Ricki, who years ago abandoned her family
to pursue being a rock musician in L.A. Now she’s Total Foods cashier by day
and lead singer of amateur rock band The Flash by night. She’s told by her ex
husband Pete (Kevin Kline) that their daughter Julie (a feisty Mamie Gummer)
was left by her husband. So she hops on a plane to Indiana to reconnect with
her estranged family. It all sounds cliché (and it is) but the movie excels in
its execution— primarily through atmosphere as well as script and acting.
Demme taps into that universal feeling of awkwardness we sometimes
experience during tense, heated confrontations. We’ve all been in those
situations where an argument between friends or family members breaks out and
we’re stuck in the room longer than we want to be. This is achieved by
stretching out the confrontations and taking more time than necessary to show
the facial expressions of characters as they react to what’s going on around
them.
When Ricki and Pete go to dinner with Julie and their two other kids
and an argument breaks out, Demme goes around the table showing everyone’s
facial expressions as they react to mean words being traded, emphasizing the
tense atmosphere. In another scene, Ricki and Julie have just finished arguing
and Julie has stormed off to her room in anger. At this moment another director
might have just cut immediately to the next scene but instead he keeps the
camera on Ricki and Pete for a few more seconds, as they stand there quietly,
with awkward looks, unsure of what do to next. Demme isn’t in a hurry to tell
his story and often times the facial expressions reveal more about a character
than their dialogue.
These prolonged moments peppered throughout scenes add a layer of
authenticity to the derivative material in “Ricki and The Flash.” Just like
Robert Altman used overlapping audio to evoke the mood and energy of a scene, Demme
uses reaction shots. For example, when Ricki arrives at her oldest son’s
wedding (sticking out like a sore thumb) the camera lingers on the random
guests and their looks of disgust and contempt. During Ricki and The Flash live
shows Demme shows the faces of the various audience members as they smile and
nod along to the performance. Demme makes communal spaces like these come
alive; they’re not just two dimensional sets for the primary actors to stand
and perform in front of but living breathing environments.
It also helps that “Ricki and The Flash” has an energetic script by
Diablo Cody (“Young Adult,” “Juno”) full of sharp, acid tongued dialogue.
Anytime the movie starts to slip into melodramatic territory, a character will
interject with a hilariously awkward out of left field stinger. Cody’s script
achieves a near perfect balance of comedy and drama; the movie deals with some
rather heavy subjects (abandonment, attempted suicide, etc.) but the humor
keeps it from being relentlessly dour. At the same time, the comedy never
undercuts the dramatic impact or betrays the connections between characters.
Not surprisingly, the acting is top notch. Streep once again proves
she’s one of the best working actors, giving a loopy, giggly and compassionate
performance as Ricki—a sixty six year old rocker with the spirit and etiquette
of a twenty year old. She doesn’t fit in with the conventionality and
refinement of suburban Indiana; Staying at Pete’s clean, modern mansion she’s
flabbergasted by the vastness of the kitchen and the almost pool sized bathtub.
This “fish out water” stuff works much better than it should, mostly due to
Streep. And she makes for a convincing rocker; seeing the joy and enthusiasm she
has while performing makes you at least partially understand why she gave up
her former Midwestern life.
Kline is also strong as the stiff, mild mannered Pete who’s always
trying to diffuse the tense familial situations (I’d say his performance alone
is fifty percent facial reactions) and musician Rick Springfield gives a tender
performance as Ricki’s supportive band member/boyfriend Greg.
In the end, “Ricki and The Flash” is light and familiar; the story doesn’t
yield any major surprises and Cody’s script could definitely cut deeper.
Additionally, the ending enters into hokey territory. But I was OK with of all
of this. Demme and the actors come together and create such a genuine, entertaining
filmic environment that a little silliness and cliché is deserved. “Ricki and
The Flash” is no doubt the biggest surprise of the year so far.
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