I tracked down the two later Mike Nichols films that he made with Meryl Streep, both based on the memoirs of famous women who wrote for the movies. One is "Heartburn," a loosely fictionalized account of Nora Ephron's marriage to Carl Bernstein, and the very public subsequent divorce. The other is "Postcards From the Edge," a loosely fictionalized account of Carrie Fisher's recovery from drug addiction and her relationship with her mother, Debbie Reynolds. "Postcards" got much better reviews when it was initially released, but I liked "Heartburn" better.
I don't necessarily think that "Heartburn" is the better film, but it's far more to my tastes. Rachel (Streep) is a divorcee who falls for Mark (Jack Nicholson), also divorced, but has strong misgivings about marrying him. Nonetheless, she goes all in on a new life together, navigating housing woes and motherhood, before infidelity throws a wrench in the works. Streep's performance here is from that early part of her career when she was able to just disappear into the characters she played without a trace. I found it so easy to empathize with her, and share the ups and downs of the relationship. And a big strength of "Heartburn" is that the highs are as strong as the lows. When the marriage is good, it's good. Nicholson is terribly charming, and there are scenes of bonding and intimacy that are truly heartwarming and uplifting, while also being very ordinary in the best way. It also helps that Ephron wrote the script, and I've loved her writing for decades.
"Postcards From the Edge," written by Carrie Fisher, features a Meryl Streep that I instantly recognized as the Meryl Streep who has been a movie star for the last thirty-odd years. She plays Suzanne Vale, an actress and the daughter of screen legend Doris Mann (Shirley MacLaine). We start with Suzanne at a low point, ODing during a film shoot, and being sent to rehab. After checking out, she discovers that the only way she'll be allowed to work again is if she moves back in with her mother, who she finds overbearing and impossible. Also involved are a new love interest (Dennis Quaid), a fed-up director (Gene Hackman), and a very nice doctor (Richard Dreyfuss). There are some excellent individual scenes, and just about everything involving Streep and MacLaine sings (sometimes literally). However, the struggles with addiction and the jabs at the fakery of Hollywood didn't do much for me. I have a history of being less interested in movies about actors, though this one was perfectly fine. I just never got as invested as I did with "Heartburn."
The two films are so different in subject matter and tone that comparing them feels ungenerous. "Postcards From the Edge" was made four years after "Heartburn," when Streep was deliberately moving into more commercial fare. Though both ensemble casts feature a lot of well-known actors, "Postcards" is more self-consciously star-studded, and is very much a Hollywood story. The comedy is broader and the melodrama more theatrical, though there are a few wry moments of honesty too. "Heartburn," though it's about a pair of famous writers, feels like it could be about any couple trying to navigate a bad marriage. There are some nods toward the East Coast milieu where Ephron was based in the late '70s, but most of the narrative keeps the focus on Rachel and Mark's fairly mundane day-to-day lives. Rachel's writing is used as a framing device, but has little to do with the plot, while Suzanne's career struggles are central to her movie.
And in the end I'm very glad that I saw both. Both movies offered a wealth of surprises, from Annette Bening's brief but winning appearance as a rival actress in "Postcards From the Edge," to Jack Nicholson breaking out the showtunes in "Heartburn." It's been so long since I've seen a good Jack Nicholson movie. And it's been a few years since we lost Carrie Fisher, Nora Ephron, and Mike Nichols, and I miss them all.
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