The Meddler * * * *

Nice lady gets nice review

Awful name, awful poster - enough to turn you right off - but The Meddler is actually a pretty good little film.  

It’s a touching and humorous portrait of a recently widowed woman (Susan Sarandon) and her difficult relationship with her adult daughter (Rose Byrne).

Her deceased husband has left her a very comfortable estate so she does not have to work.  So she takes a keen interest in her daughter who is aspiring to be a television writer whilst her relationship with her long term boyfriend is falling apart. When her daughter begs her to back off with the phone calls and the visits she invests the same energy and concern in other people.

Sarandon plays the character in a way that evokes admiration and concern. She seems to have no friends of her own and so hangs out with her daughters friends - a group of girls who are actually more accepting of her than her own daughter.

She spends time doing volunteer work at a hospital and she helps a young man who wants to better himself by going to night class. She met him whilst buying an iphone.She pays for the wedding of her daughters friend.

This is a clever gentle film with more than a few comical scenes including a classic scene of her walking onto a film set and not knowing it until she is part of the action, where of course she first meets a man who might be the right one.

In some ways you might think “how can this work?”  She’s not exciting, she has no real problem to overcome and she is not doing anything risky.  Yet it does.  You are actually very happy to hang out with her for the 100 minutes of charm that makes up this film.

Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but I found many of the scenes full of symbolism and cross reference. 

As for Sarandon, she is such a beautifully and interestingly developed character, with an air of naivety you like her and become concerned for her.  Although she is ordinary, in many ways she is the kind of film character you could discuss long after - such is her complexity. It's a very fine piece of acting from Sarandon.