It’s hard to believe that the last time Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline teamed up was 1982 for SOPHIE’s CHOICE.
A far less harrowing film, RIKKI & THE FLASH is a reunion that is somewhat a role reversal where Meryl plays the flakier character to Kevin’s more grounded and conservative.
Streep plays Rikki, headliner of a pub band, The Flash. During the day she is a check-out chick earning a pay cheque that hardly covers her rent.
She used to be married to Kline’s Pete and had three children with him before she fled domesticity in pursuit of rock n roll lifestyle, although she retains a conservative streak, espousing Republican support, an affection for the military, (her brother was a casualty of conflict), and an enforced celibacy, a rampart her guitarist, Greg, is ever optimistic of conquering.
Pete petitions Rikki’s apearance back to home town Indiana to help their daughter deal with her own marriage dissolution. Matters have escalated to suicidal and Pete’s spouse is interstate dealing with her father’s illness.
The daughter, Julie, is played by Streep’s real daughter, Mamie Gummer, and there’s a wonderfully fractious chemistry between them. The rescue mission coincides with one her son’s engagement and at a celebratory dinner organised by Pete, the whole family is reunited if far from reconciled. It is here that the acerbic other son berates her parenting skills and bitch slaps her with the gay gauntlet.
One of the delights of the film is Rick Springfield’s performance as Greg, Rikki’s guitarist and would be paramour. It’s a role seemingly tailor made for him and he rocks.
Another splendidly spikey and surprising script from Diablo Cody ( Juno, Young Adult), RIKKI AND THE FLASH is directed by Jonathan Demme whose finesse on documentaries of Talking Heads and Neil Young leach perfectly into the musical performance pieces of the picture.
Meryl probably will not be nominated for Yet another Oscar for RIKKI AND THE FLASH but I wouldn’t be surprised if the film is nominated for one of its musical highlights, a contemplative acoustic version of a song called Cold One that she performs almost as an aside. It’s a song that Rikki wrote (it was created specially for the film by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice) and it plays as it lays, a sort of signature tune for a domestic princess who became a rock n roll pauper.
Funny, poignant, real and rocking, RIKKI AND THE FLASH is a flash sharp entertainment that is ultimately life affirming and unschmaltzily reconciliatory .