The casting is great, and the performances are all right on target. Dan Hedaya is a master of the "Believe me, you don't want to see me mad" performance, with obvious menace just under a calm surface. Illeana Douglas is great as Larry's acidic, loving sister Janice, who also gets one of the best lines in the film, and at the very beginning, no less and Dan Hedaya is Larry's father, Joe Maretto. Joaquin Phoenix is Jimmy Emmett, the hapless student who becomes Suzanne's lover Lydia Mertz is Alison Follard, a young girl who idolizes her and Casey Affleck is Russel Hines, another student who gets caught up in the scheme. Sound familiar? "To Die For" was loosely based on the real-life story of Pamela Smart, who seduced her 15-year old lover into murdering her husband. Kidman portrays Suzanne Stone-Maretto: a devious, calculating, self-centered woman who manipulates Larry Maretto (a very sympathetic performance by Matt Dillon) into marrying her, quickly tires of him when he tries to stand in her way of her greatest ambition in life, which is to be the next Diane Sawyer, and soon convinces her teenage lover to kill him for her. But she is absolutely brilliant in it: chilling, funny, scary, sexy, and horrifically evil. Kidman won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress for her performance, and frankly I thought she should have gotten the Academy Award (unless I remember incorrectly, I don't think she was even nominated for an Academy Award for it). Directed by Gus Van Sant, screenplay by Buck Henry from the book by Joyce Maynard (both Henry and Maynard have bit parts in the film), "To Die For" is a wicked little gem of a film. If you would like to see a really great performance by Nicole Kidman, pick up a copy of "To Die For" at your local video store.
Joaquin phoenix to die for movie#
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!) Everything is so well orchestrated that when Kidman gets her surprising, but entirely appropriate comeuppance at the end, we are quite pleased. Also cute is the way the picture is framed: a pseudo-documentary within a pseudo-documentary. Consicously she doesn't realize this: she has no introspection she just acts. It was especially apt that she had him killed so that her pointless little docu-drama "Teens Speak Out" could become newsworthy enough for national exposure. We've all known narcissistic little darlings who would kill you for the right shade of eye shadow, but to see it acted out so coldly and with such appalling stupidity, yet with a psychology so bizarre that it has to be real, fairly takes your breath away. Kidman is mesmerizing and makes us believe in a slightly unbelievable character. Matt Dillon is wasted as the husband (in more ways than one). She thinks only of herself and would do anything for herself and would do anything to anybody who got in her way. She is headstrong, motivated and rather stupid.
Her motive is, as Illeana Douglas, who plays the sister-in-law, says, "he got in her way." This is a nice study of narcissism metastasized into psychopathology.
Joaquin phoenix to die for tv#
Nicole Kidman plays an especially shallow TV weather person who gets some grunge kids to kill her husband for her. Clever story with more depth that appears at first blush, directed with irony and a sardonic sense of humor by Gus Van Sant.
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