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.

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.

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.

The problem with PLENTY is that the first half is too slow andspends too much time setting up the second half. The long scenein the British Embassy, the "riotous" living with the loose setin Pimlico - these scenes drag on and add little to our understandingof Susan, or, at the very least, are told as though they weremerely necessary and not intrinsically interesting. However, onceshe really starts going off the deep end, about the time she hooksup with Sting, it catches fire, and burns brighter and brighter.The quality of the second half is so strong that it easily nullifiesthe ill-effects of the first half.