My Year with Meryl Streep: Falling in Love (1984)
A look at Meryl’s mostly forgotten romantic drama co-starring Robert De Niro!
I recently spent a whole year watching a Meryl Streep film every week, and I thought I’d share with you some of the reviews I wrote for her many classic films!
Falling in Love (1984)
The 1980s for Meryl marked one triumph after another. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Sophie’s Choice, Silkwood, Out of Africa. All of these films netted her Oscar nominations and created indelible impressions on audiences all over the world. But, no one, not even Meryl, is perfect. Still of the Night was a lame Hitchcock ripoff, and Meryl ended the decade by appearing alongside Roseanne in She-Devil, easily one of the most inexplicable choices of her long career.
But her 1984 film Falling in Love, co-starring Robert De Niro, might be one of her more unusual choices of all, mostly because this movie, while entertaining and highly watchable, is just so damn safe. Here was the one time that Meryl and De Niro, who shared screen-time together in The Deer Hunter (and later in Marvin’s Room), and who are arguably the two finest actors of their generation, were the two leads of a movie. They had wanted to do another film together after The Deer Hunter, and could have…
