An Ode to Lucas Hedges’s Listening Faces

Let them all talk … to him.

Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk is like a tipsy, bejeweled cousin of Mike Mills’s 20th Century Women: what if a young guy actually did look to a trio of older women for life lessons, guidance on how to navigate friendship and love and growing up? But what if that trio of older women … just didn’t really care? Alice (Meryl Streep) is a super successful novelist on a cruise to Europe to accept a prestigious literary prize. To accompany her on the journey, she’s invited her estranged-ish two best friends from her 20s — Susan (Dianne Wiest) and Roberta (Candice Bergen) — and, as quasi-chaperone, quasi-spy, her 20-something nephew, Tyler (Lucas Hedges). Alice wishes to reconnect, to dish, to gloat; her friends want a free trip. Her nephew sees the trip as a golden opportunity, a lesson. He announces his intention to join the women over a game of pool with his friends: “I don’t know what, for our generation, a friendship will look like over a long period of time,” he says. “I’ve only …