Sunday, August 1, 2010

Most romantic comedies follow a basic plot of boy meets girl, but the title of Nancy Meyers’ latest film suggests there’s a lot more to relationships than that.

‘It’s Complicated’ stars Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin as a middle-aged couple who start an affair - ten years after they got divorced.

Streep plays mother-of-three Jane, who owns a bakery and restaurant in California, and is on good terms with her ex-husband Jake (Baldwin).

The old flame begins to flicker again when they stay at the same hotel in New York for their son Luke’s graduation, and end up
reminiscing about their 19-year marriage over a drink or three.

With attorney Jake now married to a younger woman, Agness (Lake Bell), Jane soon becomes the “other woman”.

Things get even more complicated when it turns out that the architect helping to build Jane’s dream kitchen, played by Steve Martin, is ever so slightly in love with her.

The film garnered a slew of Golden Globe nominations and Baldwin believes Meyers, who brought us ‘Baby Boom’, ‘Father Of The Bride’ and ‘What Women Want’, has created something more mature than the standard romcom.

“To me Nancy’s movies are adult romantic comedies - they’re a little more honest than young people’s romantic comedies,” he says.

“Romantic comedies for young people seem to be a little crazy to me - everybody is doing incredibly stupid things to try and get a laugh. And it is funny, but when you’re appealing to an older audience, you need to be a little more dram-atic, because the stakes are higher.

“But at the same time you have to keep it light, it is a weird balance to strike and Nancy is so good at that kind of movie.”

Meryl Streep has recently carved herself a comedy niche, with memorable roles in ‘Mamma Mia!’ and last summer’s ‘Julie And Julia’.

She was the actress Meyers had in mind to play Jane - and she instantly loved the script and the screenwriter’s sensitivity to such a universal subject.

“(She has) tapped into something deep about families who’ve encountered divorce... or anybody who has been abandoned by someone they love,” says Streep.

Off-screen, the lead actors have had very different experiences of love and relationships.

While Baldwin, 51, was locked in a seven-year custody battle with his ex-wife Kim Basinger, following their divorce in 2002, Streep, who turned 60 this summer, has been married to her husband for over 30 years. But she was still able to empathise with Jane and her unconventional love life.

“Starting a new relationship as an older person, I think you are probably just more aware of the red flags that are there, because you’ve been in trouble before.

You are a little bit more cautious and sensitive and you pick up signals more easily.”

While 15-times Oscar nominee and double winner Streep may well see a 16th nomination this year, her co-stars Martin and Baldwin will be teaming up to host the glamorous awards show in March.

“I’m grateful I’m doing it with Steve, he’s done it twice before,” says Baldwin. “But even if I wasn’t doing it, I’m glad he’s doing it, because it needs to be funny.”

He’s keeping mum on who might win one of the prestigious gongs, but he does speculate about the Best Director category.

“Many people think Kathryn Bigelow might get nominated (for ‘The Hurt Locker’). If she wins, she will be the first woman to ever win an Academy Award as a director. So there are lots of interesting possibilities this year.

As for his career post-Oscars, the ‘30-Rock’ star is keen to slow down.

“I have another year of ‘30-Rock’ to do, we are in syndication, so we’ll probably do a fifth season.

Then after that is our sixth season, we all signed for six years. So by the time we finish that I’m 53 years old.

“It’s not that I don’t like what I’m doing, it’s just with whatever time I have left there are other things I want to do.

“Working in this business is very time-consuming and you have to want to do this at the exclusion of anything else you want to do - I’m not sure I feel that way any more.”

Streep, on the other hand, shows no signs of wanting to retire.

There are rumours of several films afoot and, whether they are rom-coms or dramas, whatever she chooses will no doubt be well received.

The key to her longevity? Laughter. “If you get to a certain age and you aren’t laughing at yourself, you haven’t recognised all the things that are funny,” she says.

Extra time
It’s Complicated
* Nancy Meyers says she wrote ‘It’s Complicated’ because she was drawn to the subject of the “post-divorce world that many exes find themselves in and how their relationship, in many ways, never ends”.

* The star of the American version of ‘The Office’, John Krasinski, plays Jane and Jake’s son-in-law to be Harley, who discovers the pair are having an affair.

* Steve Martin had worked with Meyers already on the ‘Father Of The Bride’ films. The director wrote the role of Adam, a
recently divorced architect, especially for Martin. “She writes quirkiness very well without it looking too exagger-ated,” he says.

* All of Martin’s scenes had to be completed in the first two months of filming as he was due to go on tour to promote his CD of banjo tunes: ‘The Crow: New Songs For The Five-String Banjo’. Needless to say, his banjo was a staple form of on-set entertainment.