To Die For (1995)

If you would like to see a really great performance by Nicole Kidman, pick up a copy of "To Die For" at your local video store. Directed by Gus Van Sant, screenplay by Buck Henry from the book by Joyce Maynard (both Henry and Maynard have bit parts in the film), "To Die For" is a wicked little gem of a film.

Kidman won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress for her performance, and frankly I thought she should have gotten the Academy Award (unless I remember incorrectly, I don't think she was even nominated for an Academy Award for it). But she is absolutely brilliant in it: chilling, funny, scary, sexy, and horrifically evil.

Kidman portrays Suzanne Stone-Maretto: a devious, calculating, self-centered woman who manipulates Larry Maretto (a very sympathetic performance by Matt Dillon) into marrying her, quickly tires of him when he tries to stand in her way of her greatest ambition in life, which is to be the next Diane Sawyer, and soon convinces her teenage lover to kill him for her. Sound familiar? "To Die For" was loosely based on the real-life story of Pamela Smart, who seduced her 15-year old lover into murdering her husband.

Joaquin Phoenix is Jimmy Emmett, the hapless student who becomes Suzanne's lover; Lydia Mertz is Alison Follard, a young girl who idolizes her; and Casey Affleck is Russel Hines, another student who gets caught up in the scheme. Illeana Douglas is great as Larry's acidic, loving sister Janice, who also gets one of the best lines in the film, and at the very beginning, no less; and Dan Hedaya is Larry's father, Joe Maretto. Dan Hedaya is a master of the "Believe me, you don't want to see me mad" performance, with obvious menace just under a calm surface. The casting is great, and the performances are all right on target.

Look for uncredited cameos by George Segal as a conference speaker, and David Cronenberg as...you'll just have to go see it.

Nothing like a little dark humor and feminine fangs to make a mash of the culture driven by 15-minutes-of-fame. In this case, a riveting Nicole Kidman as a perky, self-obsessed suburban nutcase who has big dreams of finding fame and fortune, even at the expense of her husband.

Directed by Gus Van Sant in his usual cobbled-together manner (hoary, quasi-documentary devices to propel the screenplay, regular flashbacks, direct-to-the-camera diction, etc..) based on Buck Henry's trippy adaptation of a novel by the same name. The result is a pleasantly watchable movie that moves quickly and keeps you guessing the limits to which our protagonist would limp to achieve her ambitious goals.

I felt that the premise, beyond its chirpy surface, is quite thought-provoking. If our perky weather reporter were to be successful in her quest then we could believe that total dedication to a quest is admirable and ultimately rewarded -regardless of the means employed. Can we condone murder though? Perhaps we are offered a tongue-in-cheek hyperbole that extremes are necessary if we are to escape our station in life.

This movie apart from amusing you will surely leave you with something to savor, not just off its theme but from the brilliant supporting performances of Casey Affleck, Matt Dillon and especially Joaquin Phoenix.

Recommended rental.

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To Die For is an excellent, detailed portrait of a female narcissist. This movie is no comedy. If you ever have the great misfortune of tangling with one of these psychopaths, trust me, you WONT be laughing.

Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, the girl who grows up as the center of her family's never-ending attention, the Golden Child Who Can Do No Wrong. As life goes on, Suzanne hones her manipulation skills, and marries Larry (played by Matt Dillon), who reflects back to Suzanne the image of herself that she wants to believe and see. Perfect!

That is, until Larry demands that the marriage include him. In bed one morning soon after being wed, Larry wants to make love with Suzanne. She icily shoves his hand away saying "get your hands off me." She has to get ready for work, to "fix my face" for the world. It's performance time, and Suzanne is always on. Larry just doesn't get it. Their life is about HER, not them. When Larry broaches the topics of having children and her helping him out in the family restaurant business, Suzanne decides he has to go. This girl has global aspirations. She won't be marginalized with motherhood and a family business!

When Suzanne lands a job at a community TV station, she turns a small job fetching coffee and running errands into her role as the weather girl reporting from "The Weather Center." She soon executes one of her many grandiose schemes: making a documentary about high school teenagers in their natural habitat. Enter Joaquin Phoenix's character Jimmy Emmet, an introspective but deeply lost teenager who falls hard for Suzanne. She soon sexually manipulates Jimmy into doing her bidding, with promises of eternal love and "then we can always be together." Her blinding charisma engulfs Jimmy and friends Russel and Lydia, and of course she heartlessly kicks them all to the curb the instant she achieves her goal.

If you know anything about narcissism, you'll see all the high points in To Die For: grandiosity, complete disregard for the feelings of others, ice-cold manipulation, and lightning-fast betrayal once the narcissist has achieved her goal. You're seeing how a psychopath operates. If only the narcissists of the world found the same fate as Suzanne Stone. I strongly recommend To Die For.

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If you like your humor smart, wicked, ironic, and served on a silver platter, this one's for you. Buck Henry wrote the screenplay, which should say plenty about the level of intelligence and sly wit at work here. Nicole Kidman gives the performance of a career as a woman who looks, acts, and dresses like a Barbie doll come to life. She has completely bought into the myth that, frankly, we all believe to one extent or another. That is, being on tv is a good thing and validates a person, makes that person more real than real. Her obsession to be a tv celebrity is like a narcotic for her.

Suzanne Stone lives in a fantasy land, imagining that her role as the weather lady on a local cable access tv station will somehow be a springboard for Babwa Wawa type notoriety. Watching her voracious, yet somehow sadly innocent, ambition is both funny and horrifying. Kidman plays it perfectly, never winking at the camera. The story, though based on actual events, is little more than a vehicle for many wonderful performances. Her husband, played with real comic skill by Matt Dillon, has to go, he's just in the way. The stoner, semi-goth high school students she enlists for the hit, including Joaquin Phoenix, are charmed and subservient, amazed that a celebrity would pay attention to them. (As we would be if Oprah asked us to wax her car, which we probably would, because we also believe that being on tv is a good and important thing.)

Other inspired performances include George Segal in a splendidly cynical cameo, succinctly summarizing tv business reality. Dan Hedaya, who must get his 5:00 shadow somewhere around 9:47 a.m., is just right as the guy who settles the score. But the real sleeper is Illeana Douglas, narrator and Ms. Stone's sister-in-law. She smells a rat long before anyone else, and her wise-acre sarcastic delivery is terrific, especially as she gracefully skates over the evidence. That's cold!

Van Sant is a very interesting director. Drugstore Cowboy was as fascinating as it was disturbing. Elephant offered an amazing look at Columbine through the other end of the lens. Finding Forrester, a tad trite and commercial, did have heart. Good Will Hunting, yikes, what did we do to deserve the twin monsters it loosed upon the landscape? Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, one of the best books ever becomes one of worst movies ever. My Own Private Idaho. This movie, featuring an unnerving performance by the late River Phoenix, was chilling, haunting, beautiful, and absolutely brilliant. Van Sant is certainly capable of greatness, and Kidman is also. In To Die For they are both at their absolute best.

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Nicole Kidman plays the perfect psychopath in TO DIE FOR. The psychopath is the one area of psychology that no one has a cure for. Psychopaths lack moral impulse. They not only don't have the vaguest idea of what right and wrong mean, but they also don't understand why other people can get all exercised about violations of right and wrong. Kidman in the movie doesn't murder because it's calculated and she can get away with it; she doesn't even think that far ahead. And that's what makes acting a role like this so blamed difficult. Kidman pulls it off in what I regard as one of the two greatest bravura female acting performances in the past quarter century. (The other is Kate Nelligan in the 1981 movie, EYE OF THE NEEDLE.) If only the screenplay were up to Kidman's level, it would shake five stars out of me. There's a little too much fussing about with the teenagers, and some scenes last too long. A good editing job could have trimmed ten or fifteen minutes out of this movie and made it one of Hollywood's all=time best. But, given what we have, if you watch it only for Kidman's incredible, incredible performance, you'll get a lot more than your money's worth.

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