Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 7, 1995 TAG: 9510070017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Oliver Stone got his big messy paws all over it with "Natural Born Killers" and left it in shreds. Not to mention the recent O.J. Simpson trial.
What Gus Van Sant and screenwriter Buck Henry have done with "To Die For" is far more brilliant and funny - but they couldn't have done it without Nicole Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix.
Kidman, who had never demonstrated even a teacup-full of acting ability, has apparently been choosing the wrong movies. As Suzanne Stone, she isn't just funny in a sort of Meg-Ryan-evil-twin way. She also pulls off the nearly impossible: She makes an utterly plastic character seem real.
And this is a character within a character, a woman who invented herself with the singular purpose of becoming famous on television. Even under those layers of unreality, Kidman's Suzanne Stone is an absolutely indisputable fact - from her marigold yellow pumps to the mascaraed ends of her false eyelashes. (Never has the appearance of a person real or fictional screamed out quite so loudly, ``I NEED MY COLORS DONE!!!'')
The story has a definite tabloid ring to it, and is filmed in a quasi-documentary style. It begins with an "interview" of Stone, who tells the camera: "Here's what I found out: Life is a learning experience. It's all part of a master plan that's...hard to read."
If it all seems sort of confusing to Suzanne, she never lets on. She is single-minded in her purpose, and that is to become a famous TV journalist. She marries a good guy named Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), but even on their honeymoon she is, shall we say, making "business connections" with a group of broadcast journalists whose convention is being held at the newlyweds' hotel.
Back home in Little Hope, N.H., Suzanne gets restless waiting for fame to find her and marches down to a local cable station, where she is reluctantly hired as a gal Friday. It is one of the most remarkable scenes in the movie; Kidman's Suzanne sucks the air out of the room with her bald ambition, leaving the hapless station manager Ed (Wayne Knight, who plays Newman on ``Seinfeld") and his assistant open-mouthed and gasping.
Suzanne eventually becomes "weather girl" and, in her spare time, is making a documentary about troubled teens, but Larry wants her to quit the job, start making babies and help him out at his dad's restaurant.
The resourceful Suzanne doesn't miss a beat before enlisting the help of two of her teens in a plot to kill Larry. Joaquin Phoenix - brother of River - plays the pathetic Jimmy, who becomes Suzanne's lover; newcomer Alison Folland plays Lydia, who actually believes that Suzanne is her friend. Both performances are amazing, but Phoenix is utterly gut-wrenching as Jimmy. The character - and Phoenix's performance - are the emotional ballast of this film. When Jimmy enters the picture, it becomes a movie not just about television but, more important, about the emptiness that it fills.
Mainly, it is funny and sly down to the tiniest details: the bridesmaids shifting almost imperceptibly out of the way of the wedding bouquet when Suzanne throws it at her wedding; Suzanne moving slowly toward the blinding white lights of a media assemblage while a station sign-off plays in the background.
Van Sant showed signs of brilliance in "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho," but he has truly brought everything together in this movie. It is stylish enough to make its point and funny enough to act as a reminder that what we "see" we ought not take quite so seriously.
It's what we "get" that's important.
by CNB