Meryl Streep rules as the mother of all dysfunctional screen moms in the long awaited screen adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning play “August: Osage County,” which had its world premiere Monday night at the Toronto International Film Festival ahead of its U.S. opening on Christmas Day.
Wearing a black fright wig that scarcely hides the ravages of her chemotherapy for mouth cancer, Streep’s Violet Weston — a profanity-spouting, boozing, pill-popping harridan — terrorizes her three daughters and other kin gathered in her crumbling Oklahoma mansion for the funeral supper following the burial of her long-suffering, alcoholic poet husband (Sam Shepard, who puts in a beautiful cameo appearance at the beginning).
The only person present willing to call out Violet’s cruel “truth-telling” is eldest daughter Barbara — played by Julia Roberts in her most effective, and least sympathetic, screen performance since “Erin Brockovich.” Their increasingly pointed confrontations over several days are memorable, though I wish director John Wells (“Company Men”) hadn’t shot so many of them over the actresses’ (or their doubles’) shoulders. When a furious Barbara lunges at her mother during the aforementioned supper, clumsy camera placement makes it difficult to see exactly what’s going on (or frankly, whether stunt players were employed).
Trimmed by Letts himself from a lavishly praised three-hour stage extravaganza to a two-hour film, this is a highly entertaining if dark (suicide, incest and all sorts of other nasty secrets are revealed over its course) film with a mostly excellent cast. Julianne Nicholson is particularly fine as middle sister Ivy, who has served as her parents’ caretaker in her siblings’ lengthy absence, and reveals plans to move to New York with her new lover who happens to be her purported cousin “Little” Charles (a woefully miscast Benedict Cumberbatch).
Youngest sibling Karen (Juliet Lewis) is an airhead who willfully ignores that her new fiancé (Dermot Mulroney) is a sleaze, even when he plies Barbara’s 14-year-old daughter (Abigail Breslin) with pot — his seduction attempt interrupted by Violet’s shovel-wielding, Native American nurse (Misty Upham).
Margo Martindale has some of the film’s finest moments as Violet’s younger sister Mattie Fae, who has a cruel streak of her own, as well as her own secrets. In a great scene, her long-suffering husband Charles (Chris Cooper) finally threatens to leave unless she stops ragging on her clumsy, hapless son “Little” Charles.
Rising star Cumberbatch — a Brit who’s far less comfortable with an American accent than, say, countryman Eddie Redmayne — sticks out like a sore thumb in this ensemble. To a lesser extent, that’s also true of Ewan McGregor, also cast as marquee bait for U.K. audiences, as Barbara’s estranged husband.
But “August: Osage County” is primarily a duel between Streep and Roberts, and they’re terrific together. I wish Letts had stuck with the play’s original stark ending focused on Violet instead of a limp coda that seems like a sop to Roberts’ co-star billing.
Known primarily for his TV work, Wells does an effective if not really inspired job with the material — you wonder how much more juicy the film could have been if William Friedkin (who filmed Lett’s “Bug” and “Killer Joe”) or Mike Nichols had been at the helm instead. There is still enough venom spilled in “August: Osage County” to make this drama relatable to anyone who’s suffered through a wildly dysfunctional family dinner — and who hasn’t?
In short, perfect holiday fare.