To Die for (1995)

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.

GUS VAN SANT, OPUS 5
***1/2 1995. Directed by Gus Van Sant, this film is an adaptation of Joyce Maynard's [[ASIN:0595269397 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.

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.