On Hulu, I watched Postcards from the Edge, a 1990 comedy-drama directed by Mike Nichols and written by Carrie Fisher, based on her 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. The film stars Meryl Streep as Suzanne Vale, a once-successful actress who survives a drug overdose and does a stint in rehab, and will only be covered by her next film's insurance company provided that she stay sober and live with her mother, Doris (Shirley MacLaine), an alcoholic actress who had her own fame as a cabaret star and still relishes attention.
Suzanne starts out the film making a political thriller set in Central America, doing a long take that she messes up a few minutes into it, pissing off her director Lowell Kolchek (Gene Hackman), who sees her as a drug addict ruining his movie. The next morning, she is passed out in bed with Jack (Dennis Quaid), a film producer and random man she met the night before, and she has accidentally overdosed on pills, and he drops her off at the hospital. Her life is saved when the doctor (Richard Dreyfuss) pumps her stomach, and she wakes up in a rehab center, admitted by her mother, Doris. Her intake counselor (CCH Pounder) informs her that she is in detox, and Suzanne has no memory of what has happened, but insists she is not suicidal.
Suzanne completes her time in rehab, making friends with fellow addict-in-recovery Aretha (a funny and wry Robin Bartlett) then her agent tells her that the studio will only insure her if she lives with a responsible person to keep her sober and accountable, and the only person who is available for her to live with is her mother. Suzanne is hesitant because her mother is a show-off who sucks up the attention in the room (when she visits her in rehab, another patient approaches her as an adoring fan and says he performed one of her songs in his drag act), as well as always feeling in her shadow.
The two live together while Suzanne works on the film, a lower-budget schlocky film in which she plays a cop, where the film is on a tight budget and doesn't have time for rehearsals, so she's thrown into scenes with little preparation, like a scene where she is tied to a prop cactus then told afterwards there will be live snakes in the scene. Suzanne and Doris butt heads, where Doris will make passive-aggressive comments at Suzanne's expense and pretend like she didn't mean any harm, and Suzanne will deal with things with humor and sarcasm, a touch from Carrie Fisher's writing and personality.
In one scene, Doris throws a surprise party for Suzanne to celebrate her completion of rehab, and Suzanne is pushed to sing in front of the partygoers by a live pianist. She chooses Ray Charles' "You Don't Know Me," initially with her back to the audience, and singing it with sadness and vulnerability, looking at her mother and wanting her love and recognition, only for Doris to be in performance mode, mouthing the lyrics and miming stage directions to Suzanne to remove her jean jacket when performing. Afterwards, Doris is pushed to sing, and pretends to act bashful before saying to the pianist, ""I'm Still Here" in D flat," a Sondheim number from Follies. Doris performs a number clearly well-rehearsed with gestures and inflections, flashing her legs for sex appeal, and completely overshadowing Suzanne at a party that was meant to be about her, with a look of disappointment on Suzanne's face.
Suzanne struggles with the film, getting feedback that her performance is weak and without energy, and overhears the wardrobe department criticizing her body and calling her out of shape. She has a fling with Jack, only to learn later that he is a womanizer who uses the same lines on women ("You smell like Catalina" being one of them), with Suzanne learning about this from a fellow actress, played by Annette Bening during her rise to fame (she would also shine greatly in Stephen Frears' The Grifters the same year). Suzanne feels vulnerable and angry that she let herself be romanced by this man when she is still in recovery and trying to rebuild her career, and being under Doris' judgmental eye doesn't help her sense of self.
The film focuses more on the mother-daughter drama, and Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine are really good in this, especially in scenes when they are arguing with each other and Suzanne is trying to really be seen by her mother. Doris doesn't want to be blamed for her daughter's drug addiction, but can't see how her alcoholism and putting her daughter on sleeping pills as a kid influenced her inclination towards addiction. The film has a great supporting role performance by Mary Wickes as Suzanne's grandmother and Doris' mother, who is very judgmental of her daughter, and easily showing to the audience how generational trauma between the women is passed down, with one criticizing the other and refusing responsibility for someone's self-medicating but harmful behavior.
Gene Hackman is only in a few scenes, showing up much later when Suzanne has to do ADR looping to improve her performance in her previous film, and with sobriety she is able to see how terrible her past performance was, even as her director still tells her she has talent. Suzanne cries after she redoes a line, and explains it as "Nothing you say to me is as horrible as what I say to myself... and at least it's happening outside my head where I can deal with it easier." She talks about how she knows she has a great life as a famous actress, but that it's hard for her to feel good in her head, to have good mental health to match her outside life. And her director talks to her about how her epiphany and realization doesn't mean that her life will immediately change for the better, and that life isn't like the movies, there will be a delayed reaction in just continuing to live life as a sober person and work on getting better, and his words resonated with me, the feeling like life is a continued work in progress on being better even when you've messed up or had setbacks.
Carrie Fisher was a smart and funny person who used her celebrity and privileged status to destigmatize mental illness, being frank about her bipolar disorder and substance abuse, and using her talent to become a successful writer of several novels and memoirs, as well as a script doctor on films like Sister Act, The Wedding Singer, and Anastasia. Watching this film, as well as rewatching the YouTuber Be Kind Rewind's video on Fisher and this film, made me miss her more as a personality.
