Tag Archives: David Frankel

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (David Franel, 2026)

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I finally got around to seeing THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 yesterday. It has a script that could sink any ship and direction that never rises above pedestrian but I did like it more than my friends did. It has Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, who wear fabulous clothes and make every joke work, and I did laugh quite a bit. The mystery in all of this is Anne Hathaway. It’s her vehicle. Like everyone else I fell in love with her in The Princess Diaries (2001). So she’s been an above-the-title star for over a quarter of a century now, with four films coming out this year; and I hope she’s more interesting in them then she is in this one. She is very beautiful of course; she’s very good – she’s always emotionally legible; and she’s got the most thankless part in the film. But even so, she could have brought more zing, a wink or two, some passion. I’d say her earnestness kills her, except of course, here she is, 25 years later, in her own starring vehicle, keeping the thing together while Streep and Blunt buzz, sparkle, and sting around her.

The original Devil Wears Prada ignited Streep’s career as a popular box-office star after an already long career as the prestige star/actress of her generation, admired and awarded but rarely loved until then. The 2006 film is also what brought Emily Blunt to everyone’s attention. Both are delicious here, salty and unafraid. I didn’t mind Stanley Tucci now as much as I did then, when he seemed to have cornered the market with a particularly narrow conception of ‘gayness’, though I did note all the protagonists in this film are given partners and a sex life except him, and it does somehow seem particularly egregious that a film whose filmmakers know is aimed to a considerable extent at a gay audience should think so narrowly and so little of it. But then this is a film about fashion – Streep memorable noted that the clothes in this film are like expensive special effects in Marvel movies – but so badly directed and edited, that it packs it with events and personalities in the fashion world (Law Roch, Donatella, Dolce and Gabbana) yet rarely allows the audience to register who they are. And yet….after all that, there is Streep, Blunt, the clothes, a few good one-liners. There are worst ways to spend an afternoon.

José Arroyo

Hope Springs (David Frankel, USA, 2012)

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hope springs

You may have to be middle-aged to like this movie but I am and I do. It’s not a great film. Visually it looks like a TV movie with lots of close-ups and hand-held camera. It’s a bout a devoted middle-class couple, Kay and Arnold Soames (Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones) who love each other but have given up on their sex life. She wants to do something about it. He’s happy to let it be. They end up seeing a therapist (Steve Carrell).

The device of the therapist which structures the movie is by-the-numbers plotting and the Steve Carrell character as a character is extraneous: the movie needs the  figure of therapist to tell the story but that therapist could have been anybody. The story itself exhibits a corny and rather naive belief in therapy so beloved by American culture – as if counselling were a cure-all religion with the therapist as a new, less judgmental, priest – it’s a religion with an overt cash nexus — pay money and the therapist promises to deliver a better, happier life —  but with no threat of fire and brimstone.

False as the film is, there is nonetheless something that rings true about the depiction of the relationship itself. The little every day things, awkwardness, loneliness, failed attempts to communicate with a partner, the fumbled and unrealized efforts at sex. The audience I saw it with reacted appreciatively to all these attempts, as if they too knew what the film was talking about.  They recognized themselves in Streep and, even more so, their husbands or partners in Tommy Lee Jones.

Streep is both actressy, which is to say fake, and true. One just has to accept that it doesn’t matter that she rarely ‘is’ on screen, that she always ‘Acts’. Her careful construction is such a good indication of the ‘true’ that it passes itself off as the real thing. Tommy Lee Jones is terrific: angry, embarrassed, quarrelsome, loving, afraid to say how he feels, afraid to lose her, loving and in love without being attracted. It’s a great performance. One has to give Streep her due as well, it’s a ‘great-lady-as typical-hausfrau’ performance, but the way she crosses her legs, how she dares to show her wrinkles and botch her blow job is quite daring. These are great actors taking risky chances that pay off. Too bad the movie isn’t better. But let’s appreciate it for what it is: an exploration of middle-aged sexuality that rarely appears on screen and that Streep currently seems to have a monopoly on (e.g. It’s Complicated). I’m very glad I saw it.

José Arroyo