TO DIE FOR
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Buck Henry's script from the novel by
Joyce Maynard cuts a wide swath, lambasting
lookism, the media, the sensation-hungry viewing
public, and the triumph of style over substance.
The film begins with a bang with on-target humor
but loses its oomph in the mild final chapter.
Rating: +1 (-4 to +4)
The screen has had a lot of smart and beautiful but cold and calculating women. They lurk in films like DOUBLE INDEMNITY, PRETTY POISON, and THE LAST SEDUCTION. Gus Van Zant's TO DIE FOR suggests that most of us in the TV generation can no longer detect smart and it is enough just to be beautiful. The film is in large part a portrait of Suzanne Stone (played by Nicole Kidman), who is a breathtaking but pompous and clueless woman with the personality of a spider. The film opens with the media swarming over a sensational, sex-related crime in the aptly-named backwater town of Little Hope, New Hampshire. In scatter-shot scenes we see a montage of interviews with Suzanne, with her sister-in-law, and one with her parents and in-laws all discussing a combination crime and sex scandal. Eventually we start seeing the pieces of the story in flashback. Suzanne, the beautiful daughter from a WASPy family marries the cutest boy in town (Matt Dillon), the bar- tending son of a restaurateur. Both families had misgivings over the marriage, but Larry is awestruck by the china-doll beauty and Suzanne is hard to say no to. When Suzanne gets a job as the weather girl at a local cable station, she has visions of becoming another Barbara Walters (whom she slyly puts down for being Jewish). When Larry, her husband, starts hinting that it is time to have children, Suzanne decides she has married unwisely and begins planning how to correct the situation, perhaps with the help of three scruffy, disaffected teens she is interviewing for a documentary.
Nicole Kidman has to play Suzanne Stone as a difficult combination of stupid and savvy. She spouts naive pop-philosophy and empty aphorisms and yet is able to succeed at what she wants, mostly because of her good looks. I would hope it was a difficult combination for Ms. Kidman to play. Matt Dillon glides through his role as her husband without much apparent effort. Standing out considerably more are Illeana Douglas and especially Dan Hedaya as Larry's sister and father. There are few actors who can express suppressed rage (and occasionally unsuppressed rage) as well as Hedaya. Also a particularly good casting decision was to have Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, and Alison Folland as the three not-too-bright teenagers. All three, but particularly Phoenix, look like real teenagers on the street rather than actors, and that is a much needed effect to make the story work. In fact, Phoenix and Folland prove to be actors more talented than one might expect from their new-comer status.
The telling of the story starts very strong and its jibes are both on target and laugh-out-loud funny. But the tone of the film subtly alters during the course of the film and while the plot is tied up at the end, the climax is just a bit quiet and under-powered for the rest of the film.
In the end TO DIE FOR has gotten in some good punches, but the fight is a draw. I give this one a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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