Almost There: Faye Dunaway in "Barfly"

by Cláudio Alves

I confess myself surprised by the reader's choice in this last round of voting for the Almost There series. When it came time for you to select what 1987 performance should be explored this week, your votes decidedly indicate a preference for Faye Dunaway's post-Mommie Dearest Oscar bid, Barfly. This under-discussed Barbet Schroeder flick was made from a semiautobiographical script by the bonafide poet of the gutter, Charles Bukowski. It competed in Cannes but it didn't cause much fanfare, mainly valued as an acting showcase for its cast, led by Mickey Rourke as a tic-ridden sing-songy facsimile of Bukowski himself.

As for Faye Dunaway, she takes around 22 minutes to enter this picture about alcoholism and the addicts who scuttle from the light like bugs. Haggard-looking and sitting lonesome at the end of a bar, she's quite distant from the image of a glamourous diva many might associate with the actress' screen persona…

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Months of Meryl: Before and After (1996)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

 #23 —Dr. Carolyn Ryan, a suburban pediatrician attempting to keep her family together after her son becomes a prime suspect in his girlfriend’s murder.

MATTHEW: In a 2000 Entertainment Weekly profile that took stock of her screen efforts to-date, Meryl Streep amusingly and very appropriately described Before and After, Barbet Schroeder’s 1996 small-town crime drama, as “an airless thing.” Truer words, etc.

Before and After is one of those forgettable Streep misfires that appear with a bit more frequency in the latter half of her vaunted career. The tell-tale signs are all here: an appealing but hardly virtuosic director seemingly working on autopilot, bestselling literary source material that maybe didn’t cry out for cinematic treatment after all, and a Northeastern setting in close enough proximity to her Connecticut domicile...

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