LET THEM ALL TALK – Review by Karen Gordon

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.

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 Rebecca played (Candice Bergen) and Susan (Dianne Wiest). The friends haven’t been close for years, but they accept. Continue reading…