August: Osage County (John Wells, 2013)

A family with a fractious history is brought together when the patriarch commits suicide and each member comes with unresolved baggage, which is torn into with vigour by the surviving matriarch, who has cancer and is addicted to a panoply of prescription drugs, as well as too much truth. The film very much revolves around Meryl Streep's caustic performance in the role, and it's really that which keeps you watching, despite other able turns by the rest of the cast, since otherwise it's basically a Tennessee Williams-derivative Southern melodrama which doesn't successfully escape its stagebound origins, with a very clear sense of what is off-stage and when someone has started a monologue. The dialogue is too often prey to clunky exposition too, with characters providing the audience a potted summary of their relationships and backgrounds when lifelike interaction is really called for. But Streep really does serve up a tour de force, and that alone outweighs the negatives in the end.

6/10