Mothering missteps

An unsettling contradiction runs like a fault line through Susan Sarandon’s latest film, The Meddler (rated PG-13 for language and marijuana use), a quiet, often-charming story of a recently widowed woman who copes with grief by interfering in the lives of her daughter and her daughter’s friends.

Like a lot of smaller, successful films of late, The Meddler is part of a welcome trend of counter-programming against loud summer blockbusters with modest romances between people past the age of starry eyes and angst. After losing her husband of 40 years, Marnie (Sarandon) confronts her transition into singlehood with shifting layers of sorrow, hopefulness, and generosity. Her fortitude in trying to find new purpose by serving others should be a model for her adult daughter, Lori (Rose Byrne). Yet Lori’s too wrapped up in her own problems, such as a broken heart and a ticking biological clock, to notice that the brave face her mother puts on is simply that—a face. Underneath her plucky resilience, Marnie is trying to fill up the empty space in her heart with things—things from the Apple store, things from Crate & Barrel, things from LA’s famed outdoor shopping center, The Grove—and with people who won’t remind her of the past.

As Marnie drives around sunny Los Angeles leaving epic voicemails on Lori’s phone and dropping by unannounced with advice and bagels Lori also doesn’t want, her deceased husband, Joe, looms large in the background. We can tell by the way Marnie and Lori speak of him that Joe was a good man; a loving, strong provider; faithful to his wife and devoted to his daughter. The protection he supplied to the women in his life—a protection that continues after his death—binds them together even as they try to navigate their grief alone.

And therein lies the film’s major disconnect. As any modern fable set in an urban American environment apparently should, The Meddler celebrates all sorts of relationships and family arrangements as equally beneficial. One running joke centers on Marnie deciding to throw a belated wedding for Lori’s friend Jillian (SNL’s Cecily Strong) and her “husband,” Danny. Their 5-year-old daughter will be the ring bearer. When it turns out that Danny is really Jillian’s lesbian partner, old-fashioned Marnie is a little surprised perhaps, but undaunted, and we are further assured of Marnie’s virtue in that she sees no difference between her own marriage and theirs.

Somehow a story that otherwise honors the value of a man to his family fails to notice the irony of applauding arrangements that rob little girls of fathers.

Marnie shows a similar (almost pathological) unwillingness to offer even the slightest judgment against her daughter’s choices. She says nothing when Lori announces that her mother needs to leave so Lori can have sex with someone she barely knows. She likewise stands by unsure and confused during Lori’s pregnancy scare—can she be happy? Dare she discourage the abortion of what may be her only grandchild? For a meddler, Marnie holds her tongue on life’s biggest questions. In fact, she’s more of a giver than a meddler, simply acting (as she puts it) as fairy godmother to Lori’s friends.

This all sounds much harsher than the movie actually is, and certainly harsher than writer/director Lorene Scafaria seems to intend her acknowledged autobiographical script to be. The rest is simply a warm bath of maternal nurturing from a luminous Sarandon. Still, the disquieting disjointedness remains. It’s impossible not to compare the mild anarchy of Lori’s life—in her late 30s, professionally successful yet referring to her dogs as children while half-hoping to get accidentally pregnant by an ex-boyfriend she still loves—to the support and sanctuary Marnie enjoyed in marriage. And impossible not to judge it as infinitely inferior.