To Die For (1995)

If anyone ever doubts whether Nicole Kidman is a good actress, they should immediately be required to watch this outrageously wicked comedy from 1995, for which Kidman deservedly won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role. While director Gus Van Sant handles the fact-based satire with razor-sharp precision, Kidman delivers a deliciously devious performance as Suzanne Stone, a small-town New Hampshire housewife who fancies herself the next Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, Diane Sawyer, and Maria Shriver all rolled up into one meticulously coiffed package. So determined is she to have a successful career on TV that she'll stop at nothing--even the calculated murder of her husband (Matt Dillon)--to get the attention she feels entitled to. To carry out her scheme she recruits some unwitting local teenagers including one boy (Joaquin Phoenix, matching Kidman's excellence) whose infatuation with Suzanne leads to sexual escapades and predictably troublesome consequences. It's a satirical comedy in Van Sant's capable hands, but it's so close to tabloid reality that the film never seems implausible--which only gives it a funnier, more blood-chilling quality of humor. Featuring Illeanna Douglas, George Segal, and Seinfeld alumnus Wayne Knight in memorable supporting roles, this is one of the best comedies of the '90s--especially if you prefer comedies with a decidedly darker edge. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com essential video

 "To Die For," a Non-Linear Social Satire of Dark Proportion
Nicole Kidman is excellent here as "Suzanne Stone-Maretto," the central hub of a two-hour-long blonde joke called "To Die For" (1995). It just may be Director Gus Van Sant's best film. If the film's darkly straight-faced humor weren't so blantantly bust-out-laughing obvious in its dialogue, the screenplay would be as dark as a noir film with Kidman as the story's femme fatale for everything happening in it. The film's non-linear narrative goes between normal story-line scenes, "afterwords" regarding the incidents in summary, and a scene having the in-character, narcissistic Kidman staring straight into the camera as though the audience were being brought straight into the film's narrative. Also bringing the audience straight into the film's narrative is a talk-show scene with both the parents of "Suzanne" and the parents of her husband, "Larry Maretto." This has the added effect of heightening the need for recognizing the wake-up, distress call on society, particularly involving the current television media which is what the film comments on directly. Even though the film was released in 1995, its point is just as relevant today, maybe even more so.

It seems universally perfect as a comment on narcissism, schizophrenia, and psychological superficiality, here developed dually as a social object, perhaps even mass paranoia--recognizably using sexual overtones to provide at least part of its exploitation--and the implications of a pseudo-social mentality of acceptance-through-denial by consumers who don't recognize it. The more sex, the more reality t.v., the more Jerry Springer rednecks the film utilizes, the more it reveals the dirtiness of what people enjoy watching. The film here is standard intelligence training in psychology, and justified, because it pulls away the curtain showing a much darker image than an audience expects or knew existed. Appropriately, it is Critic Rex Reed of the New York Observer cited in bold on the back of the DVD case: "Humor, tragedy, sex--this movie has everything!"

Matt Dillon plays "Larry," the newly-wed husband to "Suzanne." Dan Hedaya plays her father-in-law, "Joe Maretto," and Kurtwood Smith plays her paternal father, "Earl Stone." It's easy to see how she and her biological father have certain character traits in common.

The side-story of "Suzanne" documenting the lives of three adolescents, two of them played by Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck (Ben Affleck's brother), comes center-stage later in the film when the point for having this side-story becomes apparent. Its relevance to the whole of the film's statement furthers the film's theme--that tabloid talk shows exploit and distort the normally private lives of typically poverty-level citizens, provoking them into things like violence, not only metaphorically but also directly, out of the interest in such things brought on by television consumerism. One of the non-linear elements has the parents of both "Suzanne" and "Larry" on a tabloid talk show, and it's no different than watching Jerry Springer. For this and other non-linear scenes, the film restrains itself from fully providing the reason for them until the film's very end as though it were reserving a joke's punchline. April 11, 2008

 Portrait of a Female Psychopathic Narcissist
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.
March 8, 2008

 GUS VAN SANT, OPUS 5
***1/2 1995. Directed by Gus Van Sant, this film is an adaptation of Joyce Maynard's To Die for. Golden Globe earned by Nicole Kidman. The movie tells the story of Suzanne Stone, a woman who dreams to be on television or at least talked about. As tabloids have never been so read nowadays, there is here a guilty pleasure to replace Suzanne Stone's character by real people. No, I won't tell you any name ! No. Note director David Cronenberg's cameo as a charmer hitman. February 9, 2008

 The tabloid tale was never this funny
Nicole Kidman in 1995 at last emerged from under the shadow of her husband Tom Cruise with this movie. If anyone ever doubted that she was just another pretty face, if she didn't have a smig of talent, this was the movie that launched her officially into critical and popular acclaim. I wonder if the real people it was based on had anything to say about it?

Nicole Kidman's character, Suzanne Stone Maretto, is based the antics of a New Hampshire woman in the early 1990s. Pamela Smart, like her counterpart on the opposite coast, Mark Kay Letourneau, was a teacher who had an affair with one of her students. As opposed to Letourneau's crime, having sex with a minor because she was in love with him, Smart manipulated her teenage lover to murder her husband. Smart was tired of her marriage. Suzanne, although portrayed as far more ambitious and having much more sophistication than Smart has, is equally unhappy with her marriage as she feels her husband is holding her back from her career wants in television. Taking three disadvantaged teenagers under her wing to film a documentary (as Smart did with an orange juice commerical project with her charges), Suzanne lures Jim, played with equal aplomb and skill by Joaquim Phoenix (who also emerged from under the shadow of his later brother, River), into her bed. Young, inexperienced, and with plenty of white trash around the edges, Jim and his two friends are brought into her plot to murder her husband. Once caught, Suzanne denies the whole thing.

The sense of comedy in this movie, however, is what made it. While one one hand it could have been a fleshed out version of the American Justice episode, it was made out to laugh at ourselves as well as the people it was about. The three kids are stupid, yet ernest in so many ways, and while they are trashy they did want acceptance from others. Her husband's family, in particular his sister Janice, is a conflict to hers and they hide a thin layer of resentment towards this atypical match for Larry. All the other characters (her coworkers at the TV station, the convention people she meets in Florida, etc.) are just as much fascinated by her as they are taking advantage of her. And Suzanne herself. Cold, calculating, and ambitious who won't let anyone stop her from getting to the top; yet, she is not all that bright and knows she has to use her body just as much to get the things she wants.

Based on the outcome of the movie as well as the real events, I did leave me wondering what if. After all, Suzanne said it best. She said she is a professional person who comes from a good home and background, the three kids are trailer trash. Who do you think a jury's going to believe?

A great movie, ironic and sad and funny. September 10, 2007

 "Goodnight, honey..."
To Die For starring Nicole Kidman really is to die for. Directed by Gus Van Sant, this movie is the perfect and sexiest dark comedy ever I think. Co-starring Matt Dillion and Joaquin Phoenix are perfectly cast and boy Kidman really steals the show. She is flawless, manipulative, scary, and truly a gifted actress. She plays Suzanne Stone, who dreams of becoming a t.v. journalist, and no one not even her neglected yet devoted husband will stand in her way. As the movie goes, you learn what a psychopath Suzanne really is. I highly recommend checking this movie out, it is exciting and captaviting from start to finish, and the ending is just sweet revenge baby. Enjoy! August 14, 2007

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