Film Review | August: Osage County

Families are great fodder for drama, because we all have - or at least have had - one so we can identify with them in fiction, and they're always potentially packed with emotion, neuroses and heartbreak.

This is part of the reason why August: Osage County, a film adaptation of Tracy Letts's play of the same name, has scored Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for two of the stars of its ensemble cast, Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. It's not the only reason, but I'm sure the universal-but-specific nature of its character dynamic has helped the Academy warm to this thorny black comedy about deep-seated familial strife in sweltering Oklahoma.

The central locus of the mad matriarchy which characterises Letts's script - he adapts his own play for the screen, which is directed by TV drama veteran John Wells - is Violet Weston (Streep). The acerbic humour begins early on: the brutally honest mother-of-three, whose trademark appears to be an unceasing drive to tear into her loved ones, is diagnosed with mouth cancer. This development appears to be the last straw for her long-suffering husband, the celebrated poet and university professor Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard) who takes off without warning the day after he hires a Native American maid, Johnna (Misty Upham) to take care of Violet as she undergoes chemotherapy.

When the situation takes a further turn into the tragic, Violet summons the entire family in a fit of panic. We realise early on that this may not have been the best move. United only by a collective ease over their upbringing, the Weston sisters drag their reluctant spouses into what turns out to be a maelstrom of old resentments and new - and often shocking - revelations.

The problem with Meryl Streep is that, great as she no doubt is, her roles tend to be predictably loud 'LOOK AT ME I AM ACTING' types, exemplified perhaps most recently (and brashly) by her turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (a film that left room for very little apart from her performance).

But although 'August' gives her plenty ingredients with which to show off (it doesn't get much better than cancer-ridden prescription-pill addict with a psychologically vicious streak), she's offset against an equally strong supporting cast, and because the script is primarily a piece of black comedy before it is a worthy drama, for once we can enjoy Streep's expert actorly contortions as pure entertainment - no more, no less.

Julia Roberts's Barbara is an entry point of sorts for us into this claustrophobic and intense world, though she's hardly a clean slate herself. This is good - we meet her fresh after she's separated from her husband, Bill (Ewan McGregor) and is growing more and more estranged from her teenage daughter Jean (Abigail Breslin) - so she's an interesting emotional cocktail to begin with, even before she's thrown into the simmering pot of old familial resentments.

It all comes to a boil in a final mother-daughter confrontation between Roberts and Streep - a shouty display that is just plain fun to watch, if nothing else.

By contrast, Barbara's sisters don't fare as well. Juliette Lewis's Karen rarely rises above the 'tacky, deluded bimbo' stereotype, while Julianne Nicholson's Ivy plays a subdued character lost in a sea of explosive types.

But it's fascinating to observe the layers of this family unfold, especially when you realise that Violet may not be such a victim after all. If anything, Letts depicts a matriarchal society gone haywire. The males are generally well-meaning but inept at meeting the madness and fury of their female counterparts half way. Though there's a bitter undercurrent to the proceedings, the story is a kinder and better fleshed out version Letts's previous stage-to-screen adaptation, the William Friedkin-directed shocker Killer Joe (2011).

Though he tackles a similar set-up - characters eking out an existence is a sweltering, middle-of-nowhere stretch of America - the psychological nuances of 'August' make for a far richer and more satisfying brew.