Molly Haskell

“…. The opposition, like a gnat on the rump of a hedgehog, is one lone woman, a strong-willed beauty who violates every code of British behavior, stepping on toes and wrecking lives in the name of idealism.

“As created by David Hare… , Susan Traherne is one of the mort fascinating and troubling heroines of modern literature. Is she an intellectual shock troop of one, acting out the playwright's impulses as scourge of the atrophied bourgeoisie? Or is she a selfish egotist, smarter than most of the people around her but not as smart as she thinks she is, spewing out sarcasm as a substitute for doing anything? Although the question still can't be answered categorically (your answer may depend on your age and politics), the casting of Meryl Streep as Susan, and Charles Dance as her diplomat husband, has created a seismic shift in the way we regard Hare's characters and makes Plenty work better as a movie than play.

“If anyone had asked me, I'd have said do anything to the play but don't throw out Kate Nelligan and Edward Herrmann. In fact, nothing else has been altered…. Hardly a word of dialogue has been changed, yet we hear speeches we hadn't heard before, feel the play as an infinitely more ample, less mean-spirited work.

“Susan is woman whose great moment is behind her…. As played by Nelligan, Susan was all fire and ice, quicksilver bitchiness with an animal magnetism that paved the way for her conquests and outrages, and an intelligence that made them less forgivable. This was a woman who was too much in control to go crazy, and too smart not to perceive the discrepancy between her ideals and her behavior. As she chewed up men and spit them out for breakfast, continuing to occupy the moral high ground, we began to hate her, and to resent Hare for expecting us to see her as a hero, a feminist before her time.

“Streep makes something altogether different of Susan. She has none of Nelligan's drop-dead sexual electricity. When, as hostess of a dinner party (a glorious piece of social satire in both play and movie), she makes a dramatic late entrance, she elicits none of the gasps that Nelligan got in that plunging black gown. But by the same token, her lashing out at the British ambassador, played by John Gielgud, has less pure savagery. She has a naïve, almost obtuse quality (her Americanness shining through?), an earnestness that makes Susan more human. She really believes all that claptrap about making the world over, enough to go mad and nasty with despair.

“…. [A]s it moves through time and gathers intention, Plenty fulfills its promise as a sparkling masterwork as mercurial as its heroine, and one of the major films in a surprisingly strong year. Through the power of Streep's performance, we are granted a double vision, the young woman within the older one, that challenges our private defenses and memories as few movies do. In the shadow of the foreground, with its atmosphere of compromise and betrayal, we are made to feel the ghostly presence of the young idealist who felt--as we all did once--that everything was possible.”

Molly Haskell
Vogue, October 1985
[Get more on Schepisi's direction, which Haskell didn't write highly of?]