To Die For
Encyclopedia
To Die For is a 1995 dark comedy film, made in a mockumentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...

 format, directed by Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...

 and written by Buck Henry
Buck Henry
Henry Zuckerman, better known as Buck Henry , is an American actor, writer, film director, and television director.-Early life:...

, based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard
Joyce Maynard
Daphne Joyce Maynard is an American author known for writing with candor about her life, as well as for her works of fiction and hundreds of essays and newspaper columns, often about parenting and family...

, which in turn was based on the Pamela Smart
Pamela Smart
Pamela Ann Smart is serving a life sentence for accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering in New Hampshire...

 story. It stars Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...

, Matt Dillon
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...

, and Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Rafael Phoenix , formerly credited as Leaf Phoenix, is an American film actor. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and his family returned to the continental United States four years later...

. Major supporting roles feature Illeana Douglas
Illeana Douglas
Illeana Douglas is an American actress, director, screenwriter, and producer.-Background:Douglas is a granddaughter of the actor Melvyn Douglas and his first wife, artist Rosalind Hightower, and has said that her grandfather's performance in Being There, in particular, was influential on her own...

, Wayne Knight
Wayne Knight
Wayne Eliot Knight is an American actor, comedian, and voice actor perhaps best known for his role as Newman in the TV sitcom Seinfeld...

, Casey Affleck
Casey Affleck
Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt , better known as Casey Affleck, is an American actor and film director. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he played supporting roles in mainstream hits like Good Will Hunting and Ocean's Eleven as well as in critically acclaimed independent films such as...

, Kurtwood Smith
Kurtwood Smith
Kurtwood Larson Smith is an American television and film actor. He is best known for playing Clarence Boddicker in RoboCop and stern parental characters , and for his appearances in the genre of science fiction...

, Dan Hedaya
Dan Hedaya
Daniel G. “Dan” Hedaya is an American character actor. He often plays sleazy villains or uptight, wisecracking individuals; three of his best-known roles are as Italian Mafia boss Tony Costello in Wise Guys, a cuckolded husband in the Coen brothers' crime thriller Blood Simple, and the scheming...

, and Alison Folland
Alison Folland
Alison Folland is an American actress.Folland was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a travel agent mother and a cardiologist father. She grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and attended high school at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

. Kidman was nominated for a BAFTA and won a Golden Globe Award
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Award is an accolade bestowed by the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recognizing excellence in film and television, both domestic and foreign...

 for her performance.

The film includes cameos
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...

 by George Segal
George Segal
George Segal is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life:George Segal, Jr. was born in 1934 Great Neck, Long Island, New York, the son of Fannie Blanche and George Segal, Sr. He was educated at George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Bucks County,...

, David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...

, author Maynard, and screenwriter Henry. It features original music
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...

 by Danny Elfman
Danny Elfman
Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman is an American composer, best known for scoring music for television and film. Up until 1995, he was the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band Oingo Boingo, a group he formed in 1976...

.

Plot

Living in the fictional seaside
Seaside
-Places:* Seaside, California* Seaside, Florida* Seaside, Oregon* A mostly undeveloped coastal area in Perth and Kinross called Seaside* Seaside, Queens, a section of Rockaway Beach in New York City* Seaside Heights, New Jersey...

 village
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...

 of Little Hope, New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman
Nicole Kidman
Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...

), a young, beautiful, and ruthless woman dreams of being a world-famous news anchor. To that end, she marries Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...

), because she believes his family business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...

 will keep her financially comfortable, and starts attempting to climb the network
Network
-Mathematics:* Graph * Complex network* Structure* Flow network-Electric, electronic, biological, and biosocial: * Electrical network* Computer network* Biological network* Artificial neural network* Social network...

 news
News
News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third party or mass audience.- Etymology :...

 ladder, beginning as a weather
Weather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...

 girl at a local cable
Cable
A cable is two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted or braided together to form a single assembly. In mechanics cables, otherwise known as wire ropes, are used for lifting, hauling and towing or conveying force through tension. In electrical engineering cables are used to carry...

 station
Television station
A television station is a business, organisation or other such as an amateur television operator that transmits content over terrestrial television. A television transmission can be by analog television signals or, more recently, by digital television. Broadcast television systems standards are...

, WWEN
WWEN (fictional)
This article is about fictional TV and radio stations that have used these call letters. For the real life radio station that currently uses these call letters, see WWEN....

.

When Larry, who truly loves Suzanne, starts asking her to take time off from her career to start a family, she immediately plots to get rid of him. To this end, she begins a high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 project called "Teens Speak Out," and during a dancing project at her house while Larry is away, she seduces Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin Rafael Phoenix , formerly credited as Leaf Phoenix, is an American film actor. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and his family returned to the continental United States four years later...

), a disturbed young man, and strong-arms him and his friends, delinquent Russell Heines (Casey Affleck
Casey Affleck
Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt , better known as Casey Affleck, is an American actor and film director. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he played supporting roles in mainstream hits like Good Will Hunting and Ocean's Eleven as well as in critically acclaimed independent films such as...

) and low self-esteemed Lydia Mertz (Alison Folland
Alison Folland
Alison Folland is an American actress.Folland was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a travel agent mother and a cardiologist father. She grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and attended high school at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

), into killing Larry. Jimmy is reluctant at first, but complies when Suzanne threatens to leave him if he does not. With the aid and abetment
Aiding and abetting
Criminal=Aiding and abetting is an additional provision in United States criminal law, for situations where it cannot be shown the party personally carried out the criminal offense, but where another person may have carried out the illegal act as an agent of the charged, working together with or...

 of Russell and Lydia, Jimmy ultimately commits the murder.

The police begin investigating when they stumble across a "Teens Speak Out" video of Suzanne at Jimmy's school in which Jimmy discreetly hints a relationship (albeit a deteriorating one, since Suzanne no longer needs Jimmy) with Suzanne. Jimmy, Russell and Lydia are arrested, but Lydia makes a deal with the police to converse with Suzanne with a tape recorder
Tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, tape deck, reel-to-reel tape deck, cassette deck or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sounds, including articulated voices, usually using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage...

 taped to her stomach, and Suzanne unwittingly reveals her hand in the murder. Despite this undeniable proof of Suzanne's guilt, however, she is acquitted in court
Court
A court is a form of tribunal, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law...

, on the basis that the police had resorted to entrapment
Entrapment
In criminal law, entrapment is conduct by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit. In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability...

, and walks free (although it is also hinted that Suzanne bribed her way out of trouble). Jimmy and Russell are sentenced to life in prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

 and sixteen years, respectively, while Lydia gets out scot-free for her cooperation.

In the end, however, Suzanne gets her comeuppance when she fabricates a story about Larry becoming addicted to drugs
DRUGS
Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows are an American post-hardcore band formed in 2010. They released their debut self-titled album on February 22, 2011.- Formation :...

, desiring to turn over a new leaf and subsequently getting killed by the drug suppliers, Jimmy and Russell, who wanted to keep him silent. Larry's father, Joe (Dan Hedaya
Dan Hedaya
Daniel G. “Dan” Hedaya is an American character actor. He often plays sleazy villains or uptight, wisecracking individuals; three of his best-known roles are as Italian Mafia boss Tony Costello in Wise Guys, a cuckolded husband in the Coen brothers' crime thriller Blood Simple, and the scheming...

), hears this on television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, and realizes that Suzanne was behind his son's murder, and consequently uses his mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 connections to have her murdered. The hitman
Hitman
A hitman is a person hired to kill another person.- Hitmen in organized crime :Hitmen are largely linked to the world of organized crime. Hitmen are hired people who kill people for money. Notable examples include Murder, Inc., Mafia hitmen and Richard Kuklinski.- Other cases involving hitmen...

 (David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...

) lures Suzanne away from her home by pretending to be interested in publishing her life story, murders her quietly, then buries her under a frozen lake
Lake
A lake is a body of relatively still fresh or salt water of considerable size, localized in a basin, that is surrounded by land. Lakes are inland and not part of the ocean and therefore are distinct from lagoons, and are larger and deeper than ponds. Lakes can be contrasted with rivers or streams,...

, her favorite spot, where she once skated. In a final irony, Lydia gains national attention by telling her side of the story in a television interview
Interview
An interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...

, becoming a celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...

.

The final scene shows Larry's sister, Janice (Illeana Douglas
Illeana Douglas
Illeana Douglas is an American actress, director, screenwriter, and producer.-Background:Douglas is a granddaughter of the actor Melvyn Douglas and his first wife, artist Rosalind Hightower, and has said that her grandfather's performance in Being There, in particular, was influential on her own...

), practicing her figure skating
Figure skating
Figure skating is an Olympic sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform spins, jumps, footwork and other intricate and challenging moves on ice skates. Figure skaters compete at various levels from beginner up to the Olympic level , and at local, national, and international competitions...

 on the frozen lake where Suzanne's corpse is hidden, thus literally dancing on her grave
Grave
A grave is a location where a dead body is buried.Grave may also refer to:*Grave accent, a diacritical mark*Grave , a term used to classify sounds*Grave , a term for "slow and solemn" music*Grave , an old name for the kilogram...

.

Cast

  • Nicole Kidman
    Nicole Kidman
    Nicole Mary Kidman, AC is an American-born Australian actress, singer, film producer, spokesmodel, and humanitarian. After starring in a number of small Australian films and TV shows, Kidman's breakthrough was in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm...

     as Suzanne Stone-Maretto
  • Matt Dillon
    Matt Dillon
    Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...

     as Larry Maretto
  • Joaquin Phoenix
    Joaquin Phoenix
    Joaquin Rafael Phoenix , formerly credited as Leaf Phoenix, is an American film actor. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and his family returned to the continental United States four years later...

     as Jimmy Emmett
  • Casey Affleck
    Casey Affleck
    Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt , better known as Casey Affleck, is an American actor and film director. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he played supporting roles in mainstream hits like Good Will Hunting and Ocean's Eleven as well as in critically acclaimed independent films such as...

     as Russell Hines
  • Illeana Douglas
    Illeana Douglas
    Illeana Douglas is an American actress, director, screenwriter, and producer.-Background:Douglas is a granddaughter of the actor Melvyn Douglas and his first wife, artist Rosalind Hightower, and has said that her grandfather's performance in Being There, in particular, was influential on her own...

     as Janice Maretto
  • Alison Folland
    Alison Folland
    Alison Folland is an American actress.Folland was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a travel agent mother and a cardiologist father. She grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and attended high school at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private school in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

     as Lydia Mertz
  • Dan Hedaya
    Dan Hedaya
    Daniel G. “Dan” Hedaya is an American character actor. He often plays sleazy villains or uptight, wisecracking individuals; three of his best-known roles are as Italian Mafia boss Tony Costello in Wise Guys, a cuckolded husband in the Coen brothers' crime thriller Blood Simple, and the scheming...

     as Joe Maretto
  • Wayne Knight
    Wayne Knight
    Wayne Eliot Knight is an American actor, comedian, and voice actor perhaps best known for his role as Newman in the TV sitcom Seinfeld...

     as Ed Grant
  • Kurtwood Smith
    Kurtwood Smith
    Kurtwood Larson Smith is an American television and film actor. He is best known for playing Clarence Boddicker in RoboCop and stern parental characters , and for his appearances in the genre of science fiction...

     as Earl Stone
  • Holland Taylor
    Holland Taylor
    Holland Virginia Taylor is an American actress of film, stage and television. Her notable television roles include Ruth Dunbar in Bosom Buddies, senator's wife Margaret Powers on Norman Lear's The Powers That Be, Judge Roberta Kittleson in The Practice and Evelyn Harper in Two and a Half...

     as Carol Stone
  • Susan Traylor as Fay Stone
  • Maria Tucci as Angela Maretto
  • Tim Hopper
    Tim Hopper
    Tim Hopper is an American actor known for his appearances in movies like Tenderness and To Die For.He has been an ensemble member of the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, Illinois since 1989 and acted in various stage productions, including Arthur Miller's The Crucible.He was nominated for...

     as Mike Warden
  • Michael Rispoli
    Michael Rispoli
    Michael Rispoli is an American character actor. He was formerly part of the HBO television series The Sopranos as Jackie Aprile, Sr...

     as Ben DeLuca
  • Buck Henry
    Buck Henry
    Henry Zuckerman, better known as Buck Henry , is an American actor, writer, film director, and television director.-Early life:...

     as Mr. H. Finlaysson
  • Gerry Quigley
    Gerry Quigley
    Gerry Quigley was a trade unionist and political activist in Northern Ireland.Quigley grew up in the Donegall Pass area of Belfast. He studied at St Joseph's Training College before working as a primary school teacher.Quigley was appointed Northern Secretary of the Irish National Teachers'...

     as George
  • David Cronenberg
    David Cronenberg
    David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...

     as Man at lake
  • Joyce Maynard
    Joyce Maynard
    Daphne Joyce Maynard is an American author known for writing with candor about her life, as well as for her works of fiction and hundreds of essays and newspaper columns, often about parenting and family...

     as Lawyer
  • Chris Phillips
    Chris Phillips (voice actor)
    Chris Phillips is an American voice actor, writer and singer. He studied at Stella Adler and attended Emerson College in Boston, Ma.Chris might be best known as the voice of the Face mascot on Nick Jr. Face ran from 1994 until 2003...

     (uncredited) as Soccer player
  • George Segal
    George Segal
    George Segal is an American film, stage and television actor.-Early life:George Segal, Jr. was born in 1934 Great Neck, Long Island, New York, the son of Fannie Blanche and George Segal, Sr. He was educated at George School, a private Quaker preparatory boarding school near Newtown, Bucks County,...

     (uncredited) as Conference speaker
  • Rain Phoenix
    Rain Phoenix
    Rain Phoenix is an American actress, musician, and singer. Phoenix has four siblings: two brothers, actors Joaquin and the late River Phoenix, and two sisters, Summer and Liberty.-Early life:...

     (uncredited) as Tambourine player

Production

To Die For is a mixture of styles, combining a traditional drama with darkly comic
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...

 direct-to-camera monologues by Kidman's character, and mockumentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...

 interviews, some tragic
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

, with certain of the other characters in the film.

The film and the novel it is based on were both inspired by the facts that emerged during the trial of Pamela Smart
Pamela Smart
Pamela Ann Smart is serving a life sentence for accomplice to first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and witness tampering in New Hampshire...

, a school media services coordinator who was imprisoned for seducing a 16-year-old student and convincing him to kill her husband. The trial was the first fully televised case in the United States. However, the film is considerably more satirical and arch than Maynard's comparatively straightforward treatment of the story.

The role of Suzanne Stone was originally offered to Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan
Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra , professionally known as Meg Ryan, is an American actress and producer. Raised in Bethel, Connecticut, Ryan began her acting career in 1981 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in 1982...

, who turned down the part and the $5 million salary offered. Kidman, who was later cast in the role, was paid $2 million. Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....

, Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface . Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work...

, Mary-Louise Parker
Mary-Louise Parker
Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress, known for her current lead role on Showtime's television series Weeds portraying Nancy Botwin, for which she has received several nominations and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2006...

, Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. Among her best-known roles are those in the Quentin Tarantino films Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill...

 and Bridget Fonda
Bridget Fonda
Bridget Jane Fonda is an American actress. She is best known for her roles in films such as The Godfather Part III, Single White Female, Point of No Return, It Could Happen to You, and Jackie Brown...

 were all at one point considered to replace Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan
Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra , professionally known as Meg Ryan, is an American actress and producer. Raised in Bethel, Connecticut, Ryan began her acting career in 1981 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in 1982...

.

High school scenes were filmed in 1994 at King City Secondary School in King City Ontario featured as "Little Hope High" and cast some of the actual students of the school as extras.

Critical reception

The film was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival
1995 Cannes Film Festival
-Jury:*Jeanne Moreau *Gianni Amelio *Jean-Claude Brialy *Nadine Gordimer *Gaston Kabore *Michele-Ray Gavras *Emilio Garcia Riera *Philippe Rousselot *John Waters...

.

Katherine Ramsland of Crime Library
Crime Library
The Crime Library is a website documenting major crimes, criminals, and trials, forensics, and criminal profiling from books, police reports, crime television shows, and writers...

 describes the film as an example of a work displaying women with antisocial personalities
Antisocial personality disorder
Antisocial personality disorder is described by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition , as an Axis II personality disorder characterized by "...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood...

; Ramsland describes Suzanne as a "manipulator extraordinaire" who harms people through third parties.

In her review in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...

 called the film "an irresistible black comedy
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...

 and a wicked delight" and added, "[it] takes aim at tabloid ethics and hits a solid bull's-eye, with Ms. Kidman's teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters. The target is broad, but Gus Van Sant's film is too expertly sharp and funny for that to matter; instead, it shows off this director's slyness better than any of his work since Drugstore Cowboy
Drugstore Cowboy
Drugstore Cowboy is a 1989 crime drama directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Van Sant and Daniel Yost, based on a novel by James Fogle. Matt Dillon stars in the title role, and Kelly Lynch, Heather Graham, and William S. Burroughs are also featured. Drugstore Cowboy was filmed mainly around...

. . . Both Mr. Van Sant and Ms. Kidman have reinvented themselves miraculously for this occasion, which brings out the best in all concerned."

Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle
Mick LaSalle is an American Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] Mick LaSalle is an [[United States|American]] [[film reviewer] and the author of two books on pre-[[Motion Picture Production Code|Hays Code]] Hollywood...

 of the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

said of Kidman, "[she] brings to the role layers of meaning, intention and impulse. Telling her story in close-up - as she does throughout the film - Kidman lets you see the calculation, the wheels turning, the transparent efforts to charm that succeed in charming all the same . . . her beauty and magnetism are electric. Undeniably she belongs on camera, which means it's equally undeniable that Suzanne belongs on camera. That in itself is an irony, a commentary or both."
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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