But the film is preoccupied with gossip we're encouraged to wonder how many parallels there are between the Streep and MacLaine characters and their originals, Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.

There are some incomplete, dimly seen, unrealized scenes in the rehab center, and then desultory talk about offscreen AA meetings. What's disappointing about the movie is that it never really delivers on the subject of recovery from addiction. Everyone wants a piece of a star, even a falling one. And director Mike Nichols captures a certain kind of difficult reality in his scenes on movie sets, where the actress is pulled this way and that by people offering helpful advice. Streep is very funny in the movie she does a good job of catching the knife-edged throwaway lines that have become Carrie Fisher's speciality. MacLaine creates a glorious caricature of the aging star who has to put down her daughter to maintain her own ego. That's not to say I didn't enjoy MacLaine's performance in this movie her role has been made too important, and yet I appreciated every moment of it, even a Christmas party at which mother and daughter perform songs that turn into a competition for the love of those present. It's here that the movie takes the wrong turn, into a domestic show-biz comedy that plays up the mother-daughter rivalry at the cost of its original subject, drugs in show business. And after another misadventure, she ends up in a rehab center, where her mother comes to visit and basks in the applause of her recovering fans. She is obviously on the edge of a crackup.

Suzanne barely gets through her latest film. Meanwhile, MacLaine's latest husband sleeps most of the time, possibly as a way of avoiding his wife's voice. But because wine is socially acceptable and drugs are not, the mother is able to deny her problem while lecturing her daughter to the point of distraction. Her mother ( Shirley MacLaine) is also a basket case - a maintenance alcoholic who is never far from her glass of chilled white wine. She is not a bad person, and she doesn't want to cause trouble for anybody, but her drug usage has befuddled her to the point where she's not much use.

Streep plays this character with a kind of defiant sweetness that recalls the late Irene Dunne. All that keeps her going on the set of a movie are the frequent visits to her dressing room of a woman who sells her cocaine. Her life has become a confusion of blackouts, memory lapses, screw-ups on the set and behavior that baffles even her. As the film opens, Suzanne has awakened in the bed of yet another boyfriend she does not quite remember meeting. The father, also famous, has been misplaced somewhere along the way.

The story involves Suzanne, a young actress who has a more-famous actress for her mother.

Postcards from the edge book review