David Hare's account of a one-time French freedom fighter who gradually realizes that her post-war life is not meeting her expectations.
Acting
Streep's most underrated performance — feral, precise, heartbreaking.
Costume
Wartime glamour curdling into 1950s suburban suffocation.
Writing
David Hare's dialogue cuts like broken crystal.
Director
Fred Schepisi
Meryl Streep
Susan Traherne
Tracey Ullman
Alice Park
John Gielgud
Sir Leonard Darwin
Sting
Mick
Ian McKellen
Sir Andrew Charleson
Sam Neill
Lazar
Burt Kwouk
Mr. Aung
Charles Dance
Raymond Brock
Christopher Fairbank
Spencer
Hugh Laurie
Michael
John Serret
French Farmer
André Maranne
Villon
Tristram Jellinek
Dauncey
Andy de la Tour
Randall
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Streep learned French for the resistance scenes and insisted on doing her own parachute training footage.
Hare based Susan partly on real women he met who found peacetime domesticity unbearable after SOE work; the play premiered in 1978 when Thatcher's Britain was similarly crushing female ambition.
US
GB
