Let Them All Talk

An experimental film by Steven Soderbergh based off a skeletal screenplay by Deborah Eisenberg with dialogue mainly improvised by the actors that mostly worked due to the talent and chemistry of its main stars. The film kind of meandered along and you can really feel the whole two weeks that they were stuck on the Queen Mary 2 crossing the Atlantic event though the film only ran just under two hours. Thankfully, Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen were consummate professionals and their scenes felt natural and reassuring. The subplot involving Gemma Chan and Lucas Hedges, although interesting, showed that these two good looking young people still needed a lot more time to hone their crafts when pitted against these elder stateswomen. They are good actors but their scenes felt less naturalistic and just slightly self-conscious.

The driving narrative of the film was rather straightforward and Eisenberg's short story-telling roots were clearly evident in the structure. If we had just stuck to that, the film could have been a lot more interesting. Streep, Wiest and Bergen had great chemistry and a whole lot of talent, and if we had just focused on them three, it would have made an interesting character study of the longstanding, and long-suffering, friendship of these three women.  But instead, Soderbergh dragged it out, and mixed it up with the Chan and Hedges B-plot, and a mystery writer C-plot. This also ended up such that the titular "talk" just felt flat and inconsequential despite the best efforts of the actresses.

Streep and Bergen both seemed really at ease with this style of film-making and they were both very interesting to observe. Wiest, on the other hand, seemed more measured and nuanced, and that could also be due to how she chose to portray her character. Chan and Hedges had their own chemistry going and it would be fun to see them in a rom-com one day.

Thomas Newman composed the score and it helped with a lot of the scene transitions, but otherwise it was not memorable. Soderbergh did his own cinematography under the pseudonym Peter Andrews and although competent, was not exactly complimentary. 

Let Them All Talk was an interesting experiment that if it had been made more traditionally could have pack an emotional punch especially with such distinguished ladies leading the charge. However, in this case it just bopped along like a barrel on the open ocean, placidly passing time.