[rating=8.00]
Watching the trailer, The Meddler feels exactly like the kind of movie I’ll probably hate. Oozing with pappy sentimentalism, the previews make it seem like the next movie in a long line of lackluster mother-daughter stories that retread the familiar without offering anything new to the table. A young single professional woman; an overbearing mother; their love succeeding despite it all. Yawn.
Watching the movie, The Meddler is nothing like what the trailer tries to convey. From writer/director Lorene Scafaria (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World), the movie is a charming and often moving depiction of moving gracefully into the final stages of life with maturity and acceptance (a difficult proposition no matter where you’re at in your own development).
Susan Sarandon stars as the titular meddler, Marnie. Widowed, Marnie moves across the country to be closer to her daughter Lori (Rose Byrne) as she attempts to make her way as a Hollywood writer. Marnie is shocked to discover her adult daughter no longer needs or desires her mothering presence, so Marnie attempts to fill the void left by her daughter by mothering everyone else, from Lori’s friends to Freddy the Apple Store Guy (Jerrod Carmichael) as a way to stave off having to accept the changing world and her place in it.
Even reading that description, The Meddler still sort of sounds like a trite and forgettable film like the one portrayed in the trailer. Under Scafaria’s guiding hand, however, the film becomes remarkably more than the sum of your expectations. There’s genuine pathos in Marnie’s character, her meddling a symptom of her sadness and loneliness following the death of her husband. This is not a film about a mother and a daughter overcoming their differences by any means. No, The Meddler is a film about one woman’s struggles to know herself after a lifetime of knowing only other people.
Sarandon gives an applause-worthy performance in what’s essentially a one-woman show. She portrays Marnie with an intimacy that suggests personal familiarity, bringing the character and all her foibles to life in stunning fashion. We can’t help but feel for Marnie as she navigates the emotionally troubled waters of her life, attempting to find some refuge in the storm of tragedy she has endured. As genuinely funny as it is to watch her attempt to dip her toes back into the dating pool or to mother the poor stranger at the Apple Store, there’s always an air of personal misery to her character.
We, the audience, want desperately for Marnie to find some semblance of happiness; we need her to find peace within her own self so that she can move forward with grace. She’s the kind of character we long to root for in the movies, and the one-two punch of Scafaria’s script and Sarandon’s performance hammers this idea home with sheer delight.
Delight. Yeah, that’s the right word to describe everything about The Meddler. Top to bottom, the film is, simply, delightful. It’s the kind of movie perfect for a simple date night, or even a good film to watch when you just want to see a movie. It’s never particularly groundbreaking, narratively, but it was never intended to be so. It’s just a good old fashioned, simple story, one that gives you a character to love and to root for as you glimpse into the complexities of her existence. That’s all it really needed to be, and that is what it is. Delightfully.
The Meddler is now playing in theaters everywhere.
