StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

AaronCapenBanner Meryl Streep plays Susan Traherne, a former resistance fighter in World War II who struggles to find meaning in her life decades after the war is over. She is unhappily married to a man(Charles Dance) who isn't ambitious enough for her, and he finds himself increasingly enraged by her self-destructive ways and interference in his professional life. Susan has a friend(played by Tracy Ullman) that she is close to, but who also has her own problems. Susan has an affair with another man(played by Sting), but finds herself thinking about her former lover from the war(played by Sam Neil) whom she does meet again, but it doesn't go the way she had hoped...Well-acted but incredibly dreary film has some beautifully directed (by Fred Shepisi) sequences, and Meryl is as attractive as ever, but her character wears out her welcome after a while, and relentlessly cynical film becomes tiresome.

Noir-It-All 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.

delilah55 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.

brujay-1 I guess I've seen all of Meryl Streep's movies--even the silly one where her head is on backwards--but I think she was never better than in Plenty. It's basically a story about an English woman who risked her young life working for the French underground during the war and had the highest hopes for the world that would follow after the war ended. The film traces her increasing disgust with what in fact did follow. She takes a succession of jobs--clerk for a shipping company, functionary for QE II's coronation, assistant producer for a TV ad company--while simultaneously married to stiff but devoted British diplomat Charles Dance and intermittently entertained by bohemian Tracy Ullman. Throughout all her disillusionment she hangs on to the memory of a quick affair with an English paratrooper she met in France. A token he gave her becomes the symbol of her hope.Dance is top-notch as her long-suffering husband, trying to cope with her bouts of instability. Gielgud is excellent as Dance's boss, an ambassador trying to cope with British foreign policy. A short encounter between Streep and a Foreign Service bureaucrat, no less than Ian McKellan, is a sterling scene. Throughout the film the dialogue is as sharp as a razor.All in all, I can't think of any film which more pointedly contrasts the drama of the war years with the anti-climax of the post-war years. It gives new meaning to The Best Years of Our Lives.