In 2002's Adaptation, Meryl Street was her typical self: a leggy and lean, blond, prim New Yorker; a successful writer in a tall office building, middle-aged and respectable, even slightly untouchable for some of the other characters. And then she started snorting flowers.
Meryl portrays the very real Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief. The book describes the infectious phenomenon orchids have on their admirers (labeled "Orchidelirium" by the Victorians). As the also-real Adaptation scribe Charlie Kaufman, Nicholas Cage feigns sanity while throwing himself at the windmills of screenwriters' block. Meanwhile, Orlean's character draws on all of Street's tepid calm to hide her lacivious passion for orchids. But as Kaufman's situation gets hairier, so too do his incursions into Orlean's life, until Adaptation spirals into a drug-sniffing, gun-toting, crocodile-filled slosh through the marshes. Whatever that means.
Street is suave, we all know this. She can cry. And she has that brunchy accent that never fails to make the art-lover in all of us coo. Sure, we know she does adultery with hirsute men well --- how can anyone forget The Bridges of Madison County's affable Clint Eastwood, stumbling out of National Geographic to steal "Sweet Sweet Housewife" Meryl Street from her doddy old hubbie? But Robert was a sage man, entirely conventional in many respects. Adaptation's John Laroche, on the other hand, lacks teeth and a sense of safety, his passion for flowers hardly smoothing his rough edges. How could prim-and-proper Meryl possibly get involved with such a man?
The story would have us believe that his charm wins her over, and that in turn, his passion for orchids became hers, to the point where he gets crocked by an alligator and she's pawing about for snuff on the pick-up's floor. But the truth is elsewhere. Orlean is a tough lady, and Street's presence here gives her all the more edge. You don't suspect Meryl, you don't question her goodness. But John Laroche didn't turn her to snuff, and Orchidelirium didn't either. In arguably her best role yet, Street shows us in Adaptation how drugs and marshes are a lethal combination - but so is underestimating a suave spinstress named Meryl.
