They say Meryl Streep can do anything as an actress. “Hope Springs” proves it.
The woman who enchanted Robert Redford, Jeremy Irons, and Robert De Niro is completely convincing here as a middle-class housewife who dresses dowdily as she spends her days as a clerk at Coldwater Creek, despairing that her husband hasn’t been interested in her for years. Her husband is played by Tommy Lee Jones, which means that, even though she’s in her 60s, the guy should feel lucky to have snagged her.
I was surprised when I first heard about “Hope Springs.” Why would Meryl Streep agree to appear in a slapstick comedy about a woman of a certain age trying to rekindle her sex life? But despite the important presence of funnyman Steve Carell, “Hope Springs” isn’t a gross-out comedy, or even a farce. It’s a funny film, to be sure, but its humor comes from its reality. Carell, if you can believe it, isn’t here to spew a bunch of one-liners and make us laugh. He plays it straight, but neither is he a straight man. The grumpy Jones actually gets most of the laughs — even as he’s the least sympathetic of characters. “Hope Springs” offers the promise of a world in which people can, against all odds, change. Watching it happen turns out to be a lot of fun.
| On screen |
| ‘Hope Springs’ |
| 3 out of 4 stars |
| Stars: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell |
| Director: David Frankel |
| Rated: PG-13 for mature thematic content involving sexuality |
| Running time: 100 minutes |
Kay (Streep) and Arnold (Jones) have been married over three decades. They haven’t had sex in nearly half a decade; they don’t even share a bed anymore. They get along just fine. Kay lovingly taps Arnold on the shoulder to wake him up and send him to bed when he falls asleep in his armchair watching golf. But Kay is tired of that kind of life. She wants to feel wanted.
Kay looks to the self-help section for advice. She devours a book (and ice cream) in her car outside a Barnes & Noble, and feels the author is the one person who could help save her marriage. So, without asking her husband first, she books an intensive couples retreat in Great Hope Springs, Maine, with Dr. Feld (Carell).
Feld says things like, “Let’s try to keep the conversation descriptive and positive.” But Arnold has no interest in being either. He doesn’t want to talk about his sex life with a stranger. And he doesn’t want to face the fact that he might be losing the mother of his children. Jones, of course, is the perfect actor to play ornery. When he finally smiles, towards the end of the film, it feels like an accomplishment — both for him and his wife.
You can imagine how this is a perfect setup for a comedy. But the humor in “Hope Springs” is actually pretty tame — and thank goodness. It’s weird enough to watch Meryl Streep masturbating; I don’t want to see her and Tommy Lee Jones trying out a bunch of sex toys. Director David Frankel (“The Devil Wears Prada”) can be a bit heavy-handed at times: We don’t need the lyrics of pop songs to tell us how the characters are feeling. But he’s made an otherwise subtle, even mature film about what happens after happily ever after.
