Postcards from the Edge (1990)

and the Daughter Who Did Her Mother's Makeup

The first family film in the series. An actress out of rehab has to move back in with her mother, a star who drinks and who takes back every spotlight. What a daughter learns about borrowed moments and keeping a parent's image intact, and the quiet refusal at the end: not yet.

Postcards from the Edge (1990). Directed by Mike Nichols, screenplay by Carrie Fisher from her 1987 novel. Meryl Streep as Suzanne Vale, Shirley MacLaine as Doris Mann, Dennis Quaid as Jack Faulkner, with Gene Hackman as Lowell Kolchek, Richard Dreyfuss as Dr. Frankenthal and Annette Bening as Evelyn Ames.

“We went with the central story of a mother passing the baton to her daughter.”

Mike Nichols, on the film. The baton came with a medicine cabinet.

A note before you read. This page mentions, without detail, drug addiction, an overdose and a parent’s drinking. If any of it is close to home, the Resources page has people you can reach.

This page belongs to Plot Twist. It is the first film in the series about a family, and the first in which the person a woman learned her lines from is not a lover. It is her mother.

Like every entry on the Plot Twist page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Doris is not a villain. She is funny, generous, frightened of getting older, and she loves her daughter. The film is a comedy with a sharp edge, and it is worth reading as one. It is also fiction: Carrie Fisher wrote a novel about a mother and a daughter who are both actresses, and this page reads the characters on the screen, and no one else.

The Story

Suzanne Vale is an actress who uses cocaine and prescription painkillers. After she overdoses, she wakes in a rehab center, where her mother, the veteran star Doris Mann, has had her admitted. Doris arrives late to the family session. Suzanne is happy to see her, and then, before long, isn’t.

When Suzanne is ready to work again, her agent tells her the studio’s insurance will cover her only if she lives with a “responsible” person, such as her mother. So she moves back into the house she has spent her life trying to get out of, growing up in her mother’s shadow.

On the first night, Doris throws her a surprise party. Suzanne is persuaded to sing, and then her mother follows her and takes back the spotlight.

On set, every producer has a note for her. The producer who took her to the hospital, Jack Faulkner, turns up, takes her for a drive and tells her he loves her. Then she finds out he is also sleeping with another actress in the film. Her business manager, it turns out, has run off with all her money.

At home, Suzanne finally says it: she sees her mother as an alcoholic. Her own addictions started back when her father left. And Doris gave her sleeping pills from the age of nine.

One day on the way to the studio, she takes pills from her mother’s medicine cabinet, then stops and throws them up. Soon after, Doris crashes her car while drunk. Suzanne goes to her bedside, and while they talk, heart to heart, she does her mother’s makeup and covers her nearly bald head with a scarf, so that Doris can face the reporters waiting outside.

In the hospital she meets Dr. Frankenthal again, who treated her after the overdose. He asks her to a movie. She tells him she isn’t ready to date yet. He says he will wait.

The film ends with Suzanne on a set, singing a country song.

Postcards from the Edge opened at number one at the US box office. Streep was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The Story Before the Story

Fisher’s novel was called semi-autobiographical, and people asked her, for years, whether Doris was her own mother. Her answer is worth keeping: “I wrote about a mother actress and a daughter actress. I’m not shocked that people think it’s about me and my mother.”

Mike Nichols said that in adapting the book, “we went with the central story of a mother passing the baton to her daughter.” That is the lens for this page. Most films in this series show what a girl learned from the movies. This one shows where she learned it before that: at home, from the person who handed her the baton.

What It Gets Right

A great deal. The film lets a daughter love her mother and name what her mother did, in the same scene, without choosing between them. It lets Suzanne be funny about her own life, which is often how people survive one like hers. And it does not end with a rescue. Nobody saves her. She stops the pills in the car herself.

What It Teaches

1. Her moment is borrowed

Suzanne’s first night home, she is persuaded to sing for her mother’s guests. Then her mother follows her and takes the room back.

It is a small scene, and it is the whole relationship. A daughter learns that the spotlight is her mother’s, and that she may stand in it only until her mother wants it again. Many women grew up in a house like that. Their achievements were welcome as long as they didn’t compete. They learned to perform, and to step aside.

2. The “responsible” one

The studio will insure Suzanne only if she lives with a responsible adult. The adult it names is her mother, who drinks.

The joke lands because it is true to how these families look from outside. Doris is a star. She works, she entertains, she is admired. The Decoder’s card for this is Card S-3, The Functional Facade: “High-functioning addiction with image management.” The card’s first line could stand under the studio’s letter: “Maintaining a public image of control while privately struggling with substance use.” From the outside, the family has one problem, and it is the daughter.

3. It started at nine

When Suzanne finally names it, she names all of it. She sees her mother as an alcoholic. Her own using started when her father left. And her mother gave her sleeping pills from the age of nine.

Doris does not take it in. She defends herself, and the blame goes back where it came from. The same card lists what usually happens when someone tries to discuss it: “Defensiveness, denial, or accusations.” A girl learns early that the one thing you can’t say out loud in the house is the thing everyone lives around.

The film is careful here, and so is this page. Doris is not a monster for the pills; she is a woman of her time and her business, and the film never suggests she meant harm. The lesson is not that she was evil. It is that a child learns, very young, that there is a pill for a feeling, and that the adult who taught her will not be able to hear it named.

4. The daughter who does the makeup

The most tender scene in the film is also the most exact. Her mother has crashed her car drunk. Suzanne sits at her bedside, fixes her makeup, and hides her nearly bald head under a scarf, so Doris can face the cameras.

It is love. It is also the job. The Functional Facade card describes how the pattern hooks the people around it: “You become the secret-keeper. You manage around their use.” Suzanne is the one in recovery, and she is the one keeping her mother’s image intact. Many daughters have done a version of this, at a school play, a wedding, a hospital door: made the parent presentable so that no one would see.

Both things are true in that scene, and the film lets them be. You can love someone and refuse to be the keeper of their image. The card’s own answer: “Their addiction is not yours to manage, hide, or cure.”

5. The rush of being chosen

In the middle of all this, a man takes Suzanne for a drive and tells her he loves her. It feels like the first good thing in weeks. Then she learns he is sleeping with someone else.

The film does not make a lesson of it, but it is worth noticing where it sits. A woman newly without her drug meets the oldest drug in this series: the feeling of being chosen. A girl raised to borrow her mother’s spotlight is the girl most likely to mistake a man’s attention for a place of her own.

6. Not ready yet

Here is the refusal. The kind doctor who saw her at her worst asks her out. The series has taught this moment a dozen times: the next man arrives, and he is the reward for getting out. Suzanne says no. She isn’t ready to date yet. He says he’ll wait, and the film doesn’t make her change her mind before the credits.

It ends instead with her singing, on a set, in a scene that belongs to her. Nobody follows her into it. For the first time in the film, the spotlight is hers, and she didn’t have to borrow it.

Where the Lesson Came From, Side by Side

	The Little Mermaid (1989)	Say Anything (1989)	Postcards from the Edge (1990)
The parent	Her father, the king	Her father, who urges the breakup	Her mother, the star
What the parent teaches	Her life is his to decide, and then to give away	Her no may be someone else’s words	Her moment is borrowed, and a feeling has a pill
What she does	Trades her voice and is handed to a husband	Goes back to Lloyd once her father’s secret comes out	Names it, stops the pills herself, says “not yet” to the next man

The first two films taught girls that their fathers decided their lives until a husband did. Postcards from the Edge shows a daughter learning, slowly and with jokes, to decide her own.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us watched this for the performances, and they hold up. Nothing on this page asks you to stop loving the film, or the people it reminds you of. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Was there a spotlight in your house? Were you allowed to stand in it, and for how long?
Who was the “responsible” one in your family, from the outside? Who was it really?
Is there something you learned, as a child, not to say out loud? What happens in your body when you imagine saying it now?
Have you ever done someone’s makeup, in any sense, so that no one would see what was happening?
When the next good thing arrives, can you let yourself say “not yet”?

Suzanne didn’t get an apology or a rescue. She got her own voice, on her own set, and she used it.

You’re the audience now. The spotlight is allowed to be yours.