Ordinarily, there’s something about Nicole Kidman that gets under my skin. Perhaps it’s the vocal fry, the somewhat tired vampish persona, or the fact that she’s really rather limited as an actor. She lacks a little presence, she seems vapid and a little dead behind the eyes onscreen. So perhaps this is why the only film she’s really commanding in is Gus Van Sant’s 1995 satire, To Die For, based on the book by Joyce Maynard.
Kidman is essentially a psycho bimbo, with a surface blankness. She plays Suzanne Stone, a wannabe Barbara Walters without the talent, but the ridiculous garish power suits and big hair. Like a narcissistic Barbie doll, she is determined to make it in TV, no matter what the cost. So she marries Larry Maretto, Matt Dillon at his most lobotomized Jimmy Dean, an adoring sucker, who gives her a veneer of respectability, gets a job as a cable TV weather anchor, then plots to seduce a trio of troubled teens, in order to access a gun and .. well, the rest is standard thriller stuff. It’s what Van Sant does with the material that makes it a great film. Buck Henry’s screenplay is very funny, creepy, and razor sharp.
The new Mrs Maretto is truly despicable: a vacuous but ruthless wannabe. Her delusions are only outmatched by the worship of her by the main target, Jimmy, portrayed by a young Joaquin Phoenix, who is clearly a vulnerable, mentally disturbed kid.She basically grooms then destroys him and manipulates two of his friends.
It’s safe to say that in our era of issues around consent, intimacy training and the Epstein files, that this would give studio executives pause in considering getting it greenlit in the first instance. It’s disturbing and rather gross, even though it’s all implied, as opposed to explicit. Larry Clark, this ain’t.
What rescues the film from join the dots exposition is the drip -feed, mockumentary format. The nineties in America was all about sensationalist media, from true crime to ‘Jerry Springer’, lascivious and crass, lapped up by a salivating public who served as judge, jury and, if not executioner, witness to the prurience of everyday dirty laundry. Everything and anything could be offered up as circus entertainment. Imagine Suzanne as Tik Tok influencer today, and the film still holds up as a sharp media savaging.
Ileana Douglas, wonderful as Larry’s sister Janice ,is the film’s moral centre, a cynical trainee ice skater who sees Suzanne for what she is- a pitiful social climber. Douglas learned to ice skate for the role, and the film’s denouement is a nice flip of the bird to this truly horrible human being. What’s even more fascinating is that it was loosely based on the infamous Pamela Smart trial which shocked America in 1991. Trial by media, it seems,will always be en vogue.
Hit The North 