Plenty (1985) watch online HD

"Plenty" is a film I watch as often as other people watch "It's A Wonderful Life" or the first "Terminator", yes, I know, I must be a very strange guy. I was a teenager when I saw "Plenty" on stage at the National Theater in London. I remembered the play vividly, Kate Nelligan's performance was sensational. Fred Schepsi's "Plenty" has a totally unique life of its own. We're allowed into Susan's mind and Susan has Meryl Streep's face. Her performance makes her character's intellect visible, cinematic. Intimidating, fascinating, extraordinarily beautiful performance. I think David Hare has written here one of the best female characters I've ever seen and Meryl Streep strips it of every pretense. She can lie even to herself but not to us. It is mesmerizing at times. A ping pong ball going through the character's brain as she listens. Alone, so alone in the world. She never expresses it with words although she, I think, is totally aware of it. The infuriating sense of being incapable to adapt, to belong. Wanting and not wanting. Mesmerizing! As if this wasn't enough, Tracey Ullman, Charles Dance, Sting, Ian McKellen and John Gielgud giving, perhaps one of the best film performances during the final part of of his life I felt rather lonely in my love for this film until I started reading some of the comments posted here and realized I wasn't all alone in the world. Nice to meet you all.

This is a film where you can get lost, wonderfully lost. Following Susan, the character created on the page by David Hare and on the screen by Meryl Streep, is a journey of gloriously unexpected ups and downs. It may be because the amazing Meryl Streep goes trough the analytic intellect of David Hare with her heart on her sleeve and I felt shattered and moved by the access she provided me into the heart and soul of her own personal labyrinth. To look back with regret and feel that memories of fleeting moments of extraordinary beauty can keep you going and see you through whatever hell fate seems determined to throw your way. Meryl Streep never looked this beautiful and the transparency of her missteps are a magic sweep of the most enthralling kind. Irrationaly sane. Like most of the great bipolar. They know, they've seen through. There is nothing ahead only behind and now it's too bloody late. The stages of Susan's journey, to the after war lands of plenty are framed by her own geniality - the character's and the actress's - Susan is overwhelmed by her own awareness, lonelier and lonelier, Meryl overwhelm us with her own sublime generosity. Fred Schepsi, the extraordinary man at the helm, keeps the puzzle open and clear. Like most works of art, not everyone will be ready to open up to this experience. Pretty frustrating let me tell you. I would love to share this experience with everyone.

This is one film which has grown on me since I saw it on main circuit. It is an intelligent film, which demands a lot of active viewing. Aided with an incisive script by David Hare, it looks at Britain's history from the end of WWII, through to Queen Elizabeth's coronation the Suez Crisis, all counterpointed by the lead character, Susan Treherne (played, in I think one of her best moments, by Meryl Streep.) The film plays on the word "Plenty" and the hope for UK after WWII that there would be plenty - in itself ironic. It is also a study of a woman afflicted by bipolar disorder (manic-depression). This is not the focus of the film; in fact, it is never explicitly stated.... At the time portrayed, psychiatric illness wasn't acknowledged - it tended to be swept under the carpet.

Streep imbues Susan with a dignity, despite her liking to "lose control"; there are excellent performances by Sam Neill (Lazar, her war-time "love"), Tracey Ullman, Sting, Charles Dance (her long-suffering husband) and John Gielgud (as the diplomat who takes the fall for the Suez Crisis.) It's not an easy film, but worth watching and discussing. It must be one of the most underrated films on IMDb.

Do yourself a favour, ACTIVELY engage with this. Don't let this film be overshadowed by Meryl Streep's other films of this time, like the overrated Out of Africa. They don't hold a torch to this film!

"Plenty" needs to be seen on a big screen in a theatre; more than most, this is a film that suffers in its translation to a TV screen. (Among other things, there are scenes that are simply ruined in the format change--like the hilarious scene of Streep and Sting on a sofa as Queen Elizabeth's coronation plays live on the tellie!) Sound is also important to fully appreciating the film--like the constant reminders of the sound of opening parachutes that echo throughout the story.

It's easy to understand why the film was not a box office success; it focuses on a woman who is not terribly likeable, but I contend that it is a movie rich in observations that transcend post-war Britain and the borish woman who develops in that milieu. "Plenty" is (among other things) about passion, diplomacy, memory, self-deception and the great expectations that are so easily squashed in our unheroic modern world. The film (and Hare's play before it) revolves around a crucial scene brilliantly played by a startlingly mad Streep and Ian McKellan's icily insightful foreign service officer--well past the film's mid-point. After his long-in-coming dose of reality, Streep's Susan takes a tailspin into the movie's melancholy conclusion. It's not an easy film to "enjoy," but the uniformly brilliant performances from Streep, Charles Dance, Tracy Ullman and John Gielgud make the film fascinating to watch and rewarding to have experienced.

PLENTY cast such a spell on me. It is one of those films which has a mood and tone all of its own. It is sombre, dreamy and elegaic. And it features a little seen, yet compelling and masterful central performance from Meryl Streep, who lights up the screen with the type of intelligence and female strength one laments the absence of in contemporary film.

Based on David Hare's play, PLENTY (like so much of his work) boasts wonderfully complex, multi-layered roles for women. Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullmann excel with the intelligent dialogue given to them by this incredible writer - and despite the plethora of strong male actors surrounding them, it is the women whose stories move and interest us the most.

What I love about PLENTY is that so much about it is anti-Hollywood. Its convoluted plot is often incoherent and dreamlike, its dependence upon memories and the co-existence of past and present present challenges for audiences who normally would be sign posted in the 'correct' direction. It has an impressionistic, hypnotic feel, and the film's characters, especially Susan, are unappologetic and potentially dislikeable people. Its narrative resoultion is ambiguous, refusing the closure of more traditional dramas. Here we have a film which refuses to pander to the demands of the mainstream, and for that it is to be applauded.

Is there anything new that any of us can say about Meryl Streep??? This is a must for admirers of the actress, and a must for anyone with a penchant for riveting, deeply intelligent acting. Meryl grabs the part by the throat, investing Susan with a compelling defiance, a fierce intelligence, a sensuality, and a restrained beauty. Watch out for the dinner party scene. I forgot there was anyone else in the room (a room which included Sir John Gielgud and Charles Dance!) Such command, such depth, and such naturalness. This is an actress of phenomenal depth and magnificent expression. And such wonderful chemistry with the other actors! (Even Charles Dance who reportedly was a bit of a diva on set!! I wonder if this helped to enhance the fiery antagonsim between them on screen?)

In sum, PLENTY is deeply complicated, but give it time, watch it more than once and you will be rewarded. For its thoughtful direction, its searing, intricate dialogue and its mesmerising acting - this is a film that deserves to be seen by much larger audiences. Bravo Queen Meryl!!

Meryl Streep plays an Englishwoman named Susan traumatised by experiences in Resistance France during WWII. The film then describes episodes in the continuation of her life during the following 20 years, from VE day to the days of the little sissies, and their farcical Empire medals. The transition is shown to be from trad jazz to the unmentioned yeah-yeahs, anachronistically represented by Sting. The peculiar title seems to be a response to the puzzling question: Have you had enough ?

The neurotic, manic-depressed, bipolar, post-traumatic stress disordered, dissatisfied but beautiful Susan can be seen as a personification of disintegrating, crumbling, directionless, misguided, post-war Britain, a country that had lost an empire and failed to find a role. She takes several different jobs, and is ultimately unconstructively married to an unfortunate career diplomat named Brock. She gratuitously destroys his career, which was not especially promising however.

There is no doubt at all that this is an exceptionally fascinating script and absorbing production. In order to try to get a grip on it I watched it straight through twice, in immediate succession. Morover I bought the paperback novelisation of the film, to try to help me sort out the various incidents. It was authored by an Andrew Osmond, which thoroughly mystified me. Could this really have been the well-known Andrew Osmond, founder of Private Eye ? He did serve in the Foreign Office for a time.

One of the film's peculiarities is that its progress from one passage to the next in time occurs abruptly, with almost no connecting explanation. At one point there was a funeral, but I had no idea who was being buried. The sound was muddy on my DVD, and there were no sub-titles. I may be going a little deaf. Osmond's book made it clear that it was Susan's husband Brock's ex-boss, Sir Leonard Darwin, who was being buried. Was this the funeral of the Britain of the past ? With virtually no-one attending, because he'd resigned following the Suez fiasco and betrayal.

Superbly directed, marvellously acted. Its meaning remains elusive. The closer the danger, the more vivid the life. I only dock one star because I saw no merit in Sting, or his role. After watching it through a third time I picked up some of the points I'd missed previously. This is truly a remarkable film

David Hare's brilliant stage play has been translated beautifully to the screen. The peculiar English trait of natural melancholy radiates throughout this sad exercise of seeing all through the lens of British class consciousness, repression and despair. The color photography, the performances, the stifling framing of the widescreen shots all add to the oppressive beauty of a story about the self-destruction of a preternaturally beautiful woman. Mery Streep has never been better before or since. Hare makes her intellectual acuity a weapon against herself as she sees through all the ghastly pretenses of a corroding Empire. No insight, no beauty of body, no letting go of formality and pretense can save her from herself. Feminism itself is taken to the burning stake as Streep's character thrashes, Hedda Gabbler like, against walls and prohibitions beyond her understanding. Rarely has such condemnation looked so ravishing.

There is now and has been since 1985 a lot of conjecture as to what this film is about. The reaction I had after I first saw this film was one of the first times I was genuinely depressed after I had seen a film. Depressed by an outside force not from within myself. Women in my family were of the similar age Meryl Streep's character of Susan Traherne...so I asked them how they felt during the war and after. Their candid replies (not prompted by any film discussion either) led me to believe PLENTY was a state of mind, a post war feeling of "winner's feast after survival"...I came quickly to realize Susan Traherne, her men, her lovers, her descent into disillusionment, unhappiness, into madness, irrationality. the realization she had to live with herself and her gauche cruelty, snobbery, foolishness and self deceit... was about Great Britain herself, Susan is the Nation, Brittania. PLENTY is possibly the saddest film I have ever seen, on par with MILLION DOLLAR BABY but for different reasons. I also think Susan represents the women baby boomers in every country had as their Mother, who after taking a deep sunny breath of freedom after struggle found that their family and suburbia was a prison and that post war servitude and struggle was the hell they never reckoned with. PLENTY is a great title for this film of 'the promised land" that turned into a supermarket car park. I never want to see it again. Such is the heartbreaking success of this production. PLENTY is a major achievement in film making and it's emotional reality is absolutely crushing.... like Susan's soul and promise was crushed by post war plainness. THE HOURS goes into the same territory in the 1950s sequences with Julieanne Moore wanting to suicide. Susan's sex scene during the Queen's coronation is the cruelest, most superb observation of the relationship between the Royal family and Britain. PLENTY is a character study and not a popcorn movie. Not all films are 'flicks' as some people demand they be. THE FIGHT CLUB and the effect on 30 year old men of today of the pressures commercial modern living as personified by Ed Norton in his famous "ikea" speech is a good equivalent for today's crushed male soul.

I guess I've seen all of Meryl Streep's movies--even the silly one where her head is on backwards--but I think she was never better than in Plenty. It's basically a story about an English woman who risked her young life working for the French underground during the war and had the highest hopes for the world that would follow after the war ended. The film traces her increasing disgust with what in fact did follow.

She takes a succession of jobs--clerk for a shipping company, functionary for QE II's coronation, assistant producer for a TV ad company--while simultaneously married to stiff but devoted British diplomat Charles Dance and intermittently entertained by bohemian Tracy Ullman. Throughout all her disillusionment she hangs on to the memory of a quick affair with an English paratrooper she met in France. A token he gave her becomes the symbol of her hope.

Dance is top-notch as her long-suffering husband, trying to cope with her bouts of instability. Gielgud is excellent as Dance's boss, an ambassador trying to cope with British foreign policy. A short encounter between Streep and a Foreign Service bureaucrat, no less than Ian McKellan, is a sterling scene. Throughout the film the dialogue is as sharp as a razor.

All in all, I can't think of any film which more pointedly contrasts the drama of the war years with the anti-climax of the post-war years. It gives new meaning to The Best Years of Our Lives.

In "Plenty" (***1/2). Meryl Streep gives one of her greatest performances in the complex role of "Susan Traherne", an idealistic young Englishwoman whose compulsive need to stir things up comes in conflict with a crippling lack of courage. We follow her life from her days in the French Resistance at the end of World War II to her professional and emotional decline during the 60's. Her key line: "I want to change the world, but I don't know how." The supporting cast, production and direction are superb, and the score by Bruce Smeaton is hauntingly beautiful. The character functions as both a metaphor for postwar England and a real flesh and blood human being, although it's a flaw that we don't learn more about her family background, apparently an upper class one, which might have contributed more to an understanding of her later, often perverse, behavior. The only two people she seems to have in the world are Charles Dance, playing her long-suffering diplomat husband and Tracy Ullmann, wonderful as her free-spirited best friend, probably the kind of person Susan would like to have been if it were not for her "fatal weakness": she likes "losing control." This film has been newly released in its original Panavision dimension on DVD and looks terrific. Seeing it the way it should be seen only enhances my opinion that it's one of the most underrated movies of the 80's.

Plenty is a fantastic Meryl Streep film with a great cast of stars. Plenty was filmed during the 'Streep' days of films such as Sophie's Choice, Out of Africa and other true Streep Dramas. Streep plays an English woman after WWII where she was a involved in the war by transferring information against the Naza's. Following the war Streep never seems to find anything in life to fill her passions in life, always moving onto something new, trying desperately to find some happiness, some reason in life. We see Streep seep into Mental Illness as she is obsessed with her pass nostalgia's. Streep seeks such things as becoming a single mother (Sting plays the man she seeks to father her child) and takes in a friend (Tracey Ulman). Ulman's character is always looking for the right man, Streep is always seeking the right career, the right cause but nothing seems to bring her happiness. There are terrific scenes in this movie as Streep marries a man in the Parliment, a man that conforms to a life as an English conservative while Streep is an outlandish, outspoken woman who can't hold back and has a terrible time of biting her tongue always speaking her mind. This is a terrific film. Streep is fantastic.

The only opinion I have is my own, and I say that David Hare's PLENTY starring Kate Nelligan was the best Broadway play ever --- and I've seen dozens --- eventually becoming Meryl Streep's best movie.

There have been quite a few films that tell of men's difficulty in returning from war unable to fully return home to their mundane life with work and family. In this story, Susan had a truly insignificant role in the French Resistance in World War II; and she briefly had a lover. With the war over, she has a solidly good life in England, married to a fine man, a diplomat, a life with advantages many would envy. IF ONLY... if only she could eradicate her past, if only she could erase her dreams, if only she could find fulfillment in her husband's success rather than her own. Of course many people are shallow enough to do exactly that. Or do they? What secret desires lie in the hearts of each of us? It's easy for the audience to dislike Susan; after all, she pretty well can't stand herself, so why should WE like her, or care about her? Maybe we see a real part of ourselves in her; the part we keep quiet about. Hush! It's my secret. I'd rather you see the smiles.

The final few minutes --- which might be real or might be fantasy --- where Susan's long-suppressed dream seems to come full round to reality --- she takes stock of her "fulfillment" drawing the deepest drag on a cigarette, the final expression on her face is inconclusive.

What if? What if you could finally cash in your most heartfelt desire? Would you really want the consequence? Think about it!

This much-overlooked British drama opens with, literally fades in on, her days in WWII France. It follows her through the next 15 or 20 years, and ends with an aching scene from a past day when she thought tomorrow seizes nothing but good things for her. But nothing else in her life is ever as valuable, as dignifying or as exciting as the war. She is, maybe, a little insane. She divulges in one scene that she has a considerable issue: "Sometimes I like to lose control."

Fred Schepisi's obscure film stars Meryl Streep and it is a performance of daring delicacy. It is hard to play an irrational, maladjusted, quasi-suicidal woman with such tenderness or grace. She is oftentimes quite charming to be around for the other characters, and when she is letting herself fall short of restraint, she doesn't do it in the vein of those exclusive movie frenzy scenes but with a relatively pleasant imperativeness.

When she returns to England after the war, she makes friends with a round-faced, grinning imp played by a refreshing Tracey Ullmann. Another is Charles Dance's foreign service officer who is initially charmed by her casual, free-spirited lifestyle, and then marries her and becomes her permanent aggrandizer, putting up a barricade of composure and practically divine patience around her tantrums.

It is challenging to pigeonhole specifically what it is that disturbs Streep's character. Early on, David Hare's screenplay shepherds us to her own heuristic that after the valor and brazenness of the war, after the gallantry and the passion, it is beyond absurd to her to readjust back to normal life and endure the tedious small talk of civil commonality. Yet as the film proceeds in a clandestine manner of being episodic, we find there is something persistent, a little vicious, in the way she humiliates her husband at crucial times, constantly seeking to be tactless and incongruous. Ultimately, we gravitate toward his position when he eventually thunders that she is hateful and pitiless, and oblivious to those who have withstood her.

But then there is an postlude, moistened by the misty twilight of the most dismal hour of fall, and there is such despondence in the way she and another character both become conscious that nothing will ever graze them again the way the war did. This bit part-filled movie is conclusively not a assertion concerning war, or foreign service, or middle-class British, but just the story of this lost woman who at one time lived profoundly, and now finds that she is barely even living.

The performances grant one enthralling solitaire after another. Most of the pivotal instances come as different characters eclipse different scenes. Streep births a complete character around a woman who could have merely been a hit list of problems. Charles Dance has an unrewarding part, as her perpetually agonized husband who from the beginning seems like a very dull bureaucrat, but survives to show that he is respectable as well as foolish. Sting plays a commonplace young man who ineffectively tries to conceive Streep's child for her. John Gielgud has three small scenes and steals them all, which essentially is the story of his career. Plenty is written, acted and directed as a lather of refinement and delicate shrewdness, underneath which grows the revelation that life can often be futile, dull and depressing, and that there can be days, months, years, decades in accordance.

Plenty is one of my all-time favourite films. I loved this movie.

I understand why many people did not like it, but I think they should have another look. Sure, it is not an easy movie to watch, and Meryl Streep's character is not the most pleasant woman in the world, but that is part of the point. "Plenty" is unabashedly unsentimental, and that is one of its greatest strengths.

Meryl Streep gives one of her best performances, and it's not only because of her flawless British accent. That is just the surface of Ms. Streep's complete, and absolutely brilliant transformation into a very complicated character. She is also sexier than she has ever been on screen up to that time. She looks simply beautiful!!

This film is about as performance-oriented as films get, and it is full of great performances -the entire cast is excellent!!

"Plenty" is a movie about how different life can turn out from the way we plan it. It is not supposed to be cheerful. It is gritty, gripping, and extremely powerful. It portrays the hardships of Resistance era France, and the harsh realities of Britain immediately after the Second World War; as well as the decadence that prosperity can bring, and the disappointments of life, and how the inability to deal with them can destroy a person's sanity.

Of particular note are Charles Dance, as Streep's husband, Sam Neil as her lover, Sting and Tracey Ullman in small but important supporting roles, and especially Sir John Gielgud, who effortlessly steals the few scenes he is in. In one of the movie's few comic moments, Mr. Gielgud corrects the wife of a Burmese diplomat just as he is leaving a dinner party on the nationality of a certain European film director. Just this scene makes the movie worth watching!

I have seen this movie described as an underrated tour-de-force. That is an extremely fitting description. I would add the word classic to that description. This is a film that challenges the viewer to sit through its grim depictions of what life can be like if we don't know how to deal with life not turning out like we want it to. Depicting different eras from the Second World War to the early to mid sixties, "Plenty" is a period piece with painstaking recreations and some incredible locations in England, France and Jordan.

If someone has not seen this movie, I urge them to buy it or rent it and watch it. For a long time, this film was not available in widescreen on home video. Now there is at least one widescreen DVD which restores the film to its stunning beauty and allows us to enjoy its excellent cinematography. To anyone who appreciates great acting, this film is a MUST SEE. No serious film collector should be without this great classic.

If someone has seen it but did not like it, I urge them to watch it again, and again.

I have seen this film at least 50 times, and I could easily watch it 50 times more.

Plenty is one of my top ten favorite movies. It juxtaposes the main character's years as a resistance fighter in WWII with her later life in the frivolous, self-indulgent world of upper-class postwar Britain. She despises this world, and tries to convey her need for meaning to those around her, but they don't understand her emptiness. Everyone around her seems fulfilled with parties, social climbing, amassing wealth, and consuming as much as they can. Streep's character desperately wants society to care about things that actually matter. She falls into despair when it becomes clear that she's alone in her need for meaning.

The scene where she throws open the doors and cries, "There's plenty!" sums up the disillusionment, futility and isolation she feels in the midst of people who live for nothing.

The movie flashes back to her resistance days in France to illustrate the difference between a world where people risked their lives to stop the Nazis, and a world that has lost any substantive reason for its existence. I related to the character's despair completely.

"Plenty" was adapted for the big screen by David Hare from his stage play of the same name. I haven't seen the play. The film is complex. It is also strangely beguiling (primarily due to the riveting performances of its leading stars) but ultimately less than wholly satisfying.

The plot covers a period of twenty years or so after the end of the Second World War. It centres on the life of Susan Traherne (played with subtle brilliance by Meryl Streep), who works in Special Operations in occupied France during the War. While doing so, she has a very brief romantic dalliance with a fellow agent, Lazar (Sam Neill), who parachutes in to assist the resistance against the Nazi occupiers. Their passionate one-night stand (which is all it was) has a deep and lasting impact on Susan, one which essentially haunts her for the rest of her life. A few years after that liaison, Susan meets Raymond Brock (Charles Dance), who works as a junior diplomat in Brussels. He visits her at weekends in post-war London, where she works in a dull administrative job and shares her accommodation with a bohemian girlfriend, Alice (Tracey Ullmann). Desperate to have a child, Susan asks Mick (Sting) to father one with her. Still childless, Susan eventually marries Raymond but her increasingly selfish and neurotic behaviour casts a shadow over his diplomatic career and their marriage.

It's a long time since I have seen a film in which all the performances seem to be so good. Streep, Dance and Ullmann are excellent. And there is a first-rate cameo from John Gielgud, who plays a diplomat who resigns his position because of what he considers to be the betrayal and the immoral behaviour of the British government in response to the Suez crisis of the late 1950s. I say the performances "seem" to be top notch for one very good reason. To be able to judge them accurately, the viewer needs to understand everything that is going on. And I have to confess that I am far from sure that I completely follow exactly what the central message of "Plenty" is. Indeed, the remoteness of the film (in terms of its comprehensibility) is a major weakness. I am not at all sure either that I understand why the film has the title it does. I think what Hare is trying to tell us is that the moral values for which people like Susan fought in the Second World War were eventually corrupted by the materialism (the "plenty"?) and the selfishness that were prevalent in the post-war years. But I am by no means sure that that is the message of the film. I suspect that "Plenty" is one of those movies that yields its meaning gradually and therefore necessitates more than one viewing. (I have seen it only the once.)

There is one other problem with the film, albeit a minor one. Some of the external scenes, particularly those set in London, seem oddly unconvincing. I think this is because they give the impression of being shot inside a studio rather than outdoors. This tends to give them a somewhat theatrical, as opposed to cinematic, air. But, all in all, a good film. 7/10.

Inspired by my recent experience of seeing Cate Blanchett perform "Plenty" on the London stage, I rented the 1985 film version. It is a solid effort, and sports some excellent acting, but unfortunately isn't half of the play, but not for the usual reasons.

Films from the play are often undirected. This one is the opposite. It's overdirected. It's almost as if the director is to eager to cast off its stage roots, and he it swings too far the other way. For example, consider the scene at the reception with the Burmese diplomat. When Streep bursts into her ill-timed monologue, the camera moves into a close up. I think the scene plays better when we can see the reactions of the other characters.

Also, the humour doesn't really come through. The major laugh line in the play (along with one about inbreeding in a cut scene) is where the John Gielgud character remarks that having a mad wife is not a hindrance in the diplomatic corps. It was hilarious on the stage, but hardly elicits a smile in the movie. The problem isn't the acting - we know from "Arthur" and elsewhere what Sir John can do with a good line - but with the direction.

The other big problem is with the second-from-last scene. It plays well on the stage precisely because you don't know who it is with her until the end. Also, it was a mistake to make Codename Lazar her lover in France. It is better for him to be someone she just knew briefly, saw at his best and most courageous, and now learns is just as scummy as she is. Furthermore, it ties in ironically with her line about not wanting to sleep with someone you know.

I'm not a major theater-phile, and it annoys me to no end when people protest plays and musicals being made into films. So I surprise myself by saying that the stage is the place to see "Plenty".

I watched this film as I had recently seen the stage version and enjoyed it immensely. Although I'm not sure whether 'enjoyed' is quite the right word for this film. The production is wonderful and Meryl Streep gives a stand out performance at the helm of a consistently excellent cast. But it is really David Hare's wonderful screenplay which makes this such a moving experience. The portrayal of a woman with such hopes for life, who is then so relentlessly disappointed is, at times, painful to watch. What really makes the film for me is that Susan is not portrayed as a hero, a visionary, misunderstood by all those around her in her incessant struggle for truth and freedom. In fact, she is often portrayed as selfish, cruel and at its bleakest, pathetic. Hare never shies away from presenting the consequences of Susan's desperate, and in the end, fruitless search for her own kind of happiness and it is this that gives the story its brutal realism. Her apparent moral superiority over Raymond and those like him and their inferior brand of 'happiness', in the end proves to be hollow as we see her descent into self degradation and loss of self-respect. So it seems there is no solution. This is not a film which provides easy answers or a happy ending. Its message is, at heart, profoundly depressing, for people like Susan at least. However I think the film is as relevant today as ever, as a comment on today's increasingly shallow and superficial culture, and the feeling of discontent that many young people experience in attempts to find a deeper meaning. But it is an excellent film with humour injected throughout (I particularly enjoyed Tracey Ulman's performance in the first half of the film) and the dialogue is consistently sharp and intelligent. Definitely one to be watched.

Meryl Streep is undoubtedly one of the greatest screen actresses of all time, but I sometimes wish that her talent for acting were matched by a talent for picking the right film. Although she never gives a bad performance, and rarely a mediocre one, she has found herself appearing in some mediocre films. Even in the eighties, probably the best decade of her career, she tended to alternate between the excellent ("The French Lieutenant's Woman", "Sophie's Choice", "Silkwood", "Out of Africa", "A Cry in the Dark") and the not-so-good. A romance between Streep and Robert de Niro, for example, might have seemed like an excellent premise for a film, but "Falling in Love" turned out a great disappointment.

"Plenty" is another of Streep's less successful ventures from this decade, although this British art-house movie did at least show more ambition than the typically bland Hollywood fare of "Falling in Love". The film is based on a stage play by the left-wing playwright David Hare. Streep plays the main character, Susan Traherne, an upper-class young Englishwoman who during World War II works as an underground courier in Nazi-occupied France. The work is dangerous, but the idealistic Susan, who is firmly convinced that she is fighting for a better world, finds it exhilarating. She has a passionate affair with Lazar, a British agent. There is a key scene, set at the end of the war, where Susan stands on a hilltop in beautiful French countryside, bathed in golden sunlight, and says, "There will be days and days and days like this." That scene on the hill is a flashback- in fact it is the last shot in the film. By this time we have already learnt that the post-war years have turned out to be far less rosy than Susan imagined. Nothing in her peacetime life can ever be as thrilling, or as fulfilling, as her wartime experiences. Her jobs as a shipping clerk and in advertising provide her with no satisfaction. She has an unsatisfactory affair with the working-class Mick and a disastrous marriage to Raymond Brock, a career diplomat. She tries to rekindle her affair with Lazar, but cannot recapture their wartime passion. She always lives under the shadow of depression and mental instability.

David Hare wrote about the film that it was called "Plenty" because it depicts the way in which "the years of austerity in the late forties are followed by the years of plenty in the mid-fifties, and it's a recurring feeling in the film that it is money that rots people". This could have been an interesting theme- the contrast between the idealism of the forties and the complacent materialism of the fifties- but it never really comes through in the film. Indeed, some commentators have seen quite the opposite message in the film, which they interpret as showing how wartime hopes of greater material prosperity for the working class were to be disappointed in the fifties. This message, however, does not really come through either. There is not much in the film about either middle-class wealth or working-class poverty; much of the film's most overtly political content concerns the Suez crisis of 1956.

There are attempts to draw analogies between the personal lives of the characters and the wider society of which they are a part, but the film is really about Susan and her fragile personality. She comes across as an incredibly selfish and self-centred individual; what worries her is not the state of British society or the lot of the working class but rather the fact that her own life is not as exciting as it once was. The collapse of her marriage to Raymond results from the fact that it is her increasingly eccentric behaviour which has damaged his career and her refusal to live abroad which has prevented him from being offered foreign postings.

There are some good acting performances in the film, but they mostly come in cameo roles, such as John Gielgud as Sir Leonard Darwin, the Foreign Office mandarin who resigns over Suez, or Ian McKellen as Sir Andrew Charleson, the urbane and supercilious diplomat who succeeds Darwin as Raymond's superior, or Tracey Ullman as Susan's friend Alice. Streep's own performance is technically good- her English accent is flawless, even better than in "The French Lieutenant's Woman"- but she never succeeds in arousing our sympathy for her self-obsessed character. "Plenty" could have been an interesting study of British society during and after World War II, but ends up as a cold, uninvolving character study of a neurotic woman. 5/10

Plenty' is one of those films that is difficult to like, even though you may feel obliged to admire it. It represents an allegory of some kind or another, which is something that I read about in a newspaper review. Well, I must have read about it somewhere, because as I was watching it, I didn't understand what it was supposed to be about and needed some assistance when it was all over.

The deadly weakness of this film is that Meryl Streep plays a woman that any sensible person in the audience would want to strangle, because she is so completely selfish and bloody-minded. By the end of the film she has become mentally unhinged and I would challenge anyone to feel any sympathy with her plight. It may have been a good career move for Streep to play, at least on paper, such a non-standard type of female character, but for those of us in the audience, it is a bit difficult to make the connection to her. She literally appears out of nowhere at the beginning of the film; she appears to have no family; despite being middle-class to the backbone and having a good job, she is disoriented, mentally unstable and continually whining about how boring life is. She marries a man from the diplomatic service and takes a downward slide towards either schizophrenia or psychosis, I'm not sure which. They move to another country and she remains unhappily sedated for the rest of the film, after attempting to have a relationship with a working class lad and it coming to a bad end, apparently a dilemma indicative, according to many reviewers, of the inability of the post-war Atlee government to organise a truce between the classes in England. Personally, I was not convinced.

The supporting cast is actually quite impressive, but they seem to have little purpose other than to stroke Streep's colossal ego. Sam Neill plays her contemporary during the French Resistance; Charles Dance is her sympathetic and put-upon husband, Tracey Ullmann is her best friend (and I didn't envy her the task) and Sting is the working class lad she cons into sleeping with her.

I don't mean to sound so smug but I was not convinced by a word of 'Plenty' and disliked the experience. Basically, it's far too cold and cerebral for a commercial venture that has been presumably made to attract an audience. The story, if it could be called that, is contrived, and what the film is meant to be about is obscure. Streep is insufferable in an impossible role and I found the entire thing nasty, unconvincing and totally lacking in any entertainment value whatsoever.

What must have seemed like a complex characterization is simply confusing in this Meryl Streep movie about an overly neurotic woman whose direction as a human being has no focus. She is Susan Traherne, who goes from Ally messenger in World War II to diplomat's wife in post-war England, all the while alienating practically everybody around her with the most bizarre behavior that seems to have no justification. Snippets of this woman's life are missing to properly flow from situation to situation, making the whole story a rather blurry mess. As Streep had risen to become the top dramatic actress in Hollywood, she was (and still is) mesmerizing. But it seems more like an acting exercises than an actual role to play, so it is no wonder that this film has seemed to have slipped into obscurity over her more known 80's films ("Sophie's Choice" and the same year's Best Picture, "Out of Africa").

Only two of the supporting players (Tracy Ullman as an eccentric writer and Sir John Gielgud as Sir Leonard Darwin) really stand out, giving truly strong performances. Charles Dance, Sam Neill and Sting are the men in Streep's life, but they are easily swallowed up, both by the actresses' performance and the character's hunger to emotionally chew up and spit out each of her lovers. The film covers a lot of mid 20th Century history, from World War II to Queen Elizabeth's coronation (used as a backdrop for a sexual scene between a fully clothed Streep and Sting) and later the Suez Canal conflict. This is the type of film that might have better worked as a BBC or PBS mini-series to fully tie together the entire story to make Streep's character more understandable and sympathetic.

I have known this movie now for 30 years. Almost no one I know saw it back in 1985. The one person who did see it didn't understand it, though he tried. His feelings were neutral, but his bewildered description intrigued me. He didn't get what I've got out of it all these years. I find it meaningful in different ways in each phase of my life, Now I see a strong message of the futility of trying to recapture the past, the intensity of the past, or one's youth. There is also a tacit reading of the film that the world grows less interesting over one's life, until one is left in a bland holding pattern. Each frame of the movie stands as a testimony to how much better things used to be, when you were young and feeling things intensely.

The most generous thing you might feel about these character is confusion or ambivalence. You do not grow fond of them as the movie proceeds. Some of them are contemptible and/or dysfunctional. There is more to movies than liking the characters. This is a movie for thinking viewers, which were rare in 1985, and now all but gone.

The movie is never jejune or coddling as later Streep movies are (Julia and Julia, The Devil wears Prada - weak filmmaking) and that's a testimony to capability of director Fred Schepisi, who seems to only film thoughtful scripts. Schepisi is a criminally underrated director. Schepisi also did good work on A Cry in the Dark, and really excellent work on The Devils Playground. As with all his movies this one is beautifully lensed, and the aspect ratio is very elegant.

If anything is wrong with the movie it's that there's too much of the Charles Dance character (the bland, decent, diplomat husband) in it, especially in the last 45 minutes. He's not interesting, doesn't make a very good foil, and in some scenes seems to only exist as a device glue said scenes together.

This is hard to track down, but is far better movie than Sophie's Choice, Silkwood, Out of Africa, where Streep played characters with more easily described dilemmas.

I was moved by this film. I was aware of Kate Nelligan's performance as Susan Traherne in the original stage version, a lusty, glowing former Resistance heroine with a shattered psyche. In the film, Meryl Streep focused on a beautiful, disarming character's inconsistent control of the crazy energy lurking underneath.

Plenty could be re-released today on a double bill with the recently released Brothers. Both show the long-term effects of war, fought overtly and covertly, on combatants and those who love them. It is no secret that the soldier in Brothers wreaks havoc on his family after returning from one tour of duty too many in Iraq. "People with PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of their ordeal and feel emotionally numb, especially with people they were once close to."

So, one way to view and appreciate Susan Traherne and her effect on her husband, friends and co-workers is from this perspective within the context of their cultures.

This has to be the single worst movie I have ever seen. The story is poorly constructed, the acting is dismal, it's simply a waste of time.

Set in post war Europe the story had potential especially with the main character fighting with the affect of working as an undercover agent in the war.

But it never lifts off. The plot is thin, the characters are not convincing and are poorly played. And Streep never acts well at all. Very very disappointing.

I have been wrecking my head for days trying to find out what went wrong here but am afraid I have to give up.

Don't even think about watching it.