Let Them All Talk: Streep, Bergen and Wiest rehash the past aboard ship in Soderbergh's deceptively breezy film

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A

There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye in Steven Soderbergh’s wise and deceptively breezy new film Let Them All Talk.

The film centers around Alice (Meryl Streep) a successful Pulitzer Prize winning author. She’s working on a new novel, and her publisher, represented by her eager-to-please new agent Karen (Gemma Chan), is hoping that it’s a much longed-for sequel to her prize-winning novel You Always/You Never.    

Alice, who from the beginning seems deliberately elusive, demanding and passive-aggressive, is dismissive of the idea, and won’t reveal anything about what she’s writing, So, possibilities hang in the air. 

Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen are old friends with old grudges on a cruise.

The conversation then turns to a prestigious prize that Alice has been awarded and the forthcoming awards ceremony in England. The persnickety-seeming Alice won’t fly, and therefore won’t go to receive it, 

But Karen has a solution.  She can get Alice free passage to England on the Queen Mary 2, if she’ll give a lecture during the crossing.

Alice seems to like the idea. She can use the time during the trip to polish the new novel. But to make it happen she also wants to bring guests, also for free: She invites three: her nephew, Tyler (Lucas Hedges), who will be an assistant of sorts for her;  and her two oldest friends from university Roberta (Candice Bergen) and Susan (Dianne Wiest).  The friends haven’t been close for years, but they accept. 

As well, without telling Alice, Karen books herself on the ship, to keep an eye on the author from afar and see if she can divine what the prized author is working on (falling for Tyler en route).  She’s warned by her boss that for the expense of the trip, she’d better deliver or risk her status in the agency. 

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"Alice is tough to read. Fussy, withholding, and seemingly pretentious, her on board behaviour initially puzzles her guests. She sets up a tight schedule focused around her writing. It includes daily breakfasts with Tyler, but the only time she’ll see Susan and Roberta is at dinner.

The friends seem taken aback by her boundaries, and lack of availability, but they get on with enjoying their time on the ship. That includes spending time together going over their shared history and, for Roberta airing deep grievances. She bitterly believes that Alice’s big success came at her expense; that Alice’s award winning book was basically ripped off from her life story,  and that as a result, her life has suffered, while Alice’s has flourished.

Soderbergh enlisted author Deborah Eisenberg to flesh out the story of Alice, and then shot it in sequential order on an actual trans-oceanic crossing of the Queen Mary 2, with the actors improvising their dialogue, based on the  outline for each scene. 

With all the characters doing their respective things, there is a lot going on, on the surface, But there’s also a lot more going on under the surface too. Experiences, relationships, conversations, secrets, wounds, regrets, joys, etc.  What starts as a wry comedy slowly morphs into something else as the film goes on. 

The cast: Streep, Bergen, Wiest, Jones and Hedges, is superb and a joy to watch.  Soderbergh’s filming style for this film, the fact that they’re shooting on an actual crossing and improvising dialogue, creates a natural tone for the movie that makes it feel a bit like we’re eavesdropping on everyone. 

With these veteran actors at the top of their game, in the hands of  Soderbergh, the result is wonderful.  Among Soderbergh’s considerable gifts is the ability to make movies that may seem light on the surface, often from an off-beat angle and a little screwball, but with intellectual and emotional weight.  It’s like it’s genetically impossible for him to make a movie that doesn’t have something grounded and truthful about it. It is a gift that someone this accomplished continues to work in independent cinema with human scale storytelling. 

Soderbergh keeps Let Them All Talk light, and it is a lot of fun. But with some surprising turns there’s also some real life wisdom there. A gem. 

Let Them All Talk. Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Written by Deborah Eisenberg. Stars Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest. Premieres on Crave on Friday, December 11, 2020.