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Author:
Sheila Benson
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Sheila Benson was the principal Los Angeles Times film critic from 1981-91, following which she was their Critic At Large, writing on all aspects of the cultural life of that city. She also has written for Cinemania/msn.com for which she was chief film critic and many other papers.
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If critics can be said to have favorites -- and they have -- early on Sheila was a particular champion of independent films, as they were finding their voice and their power. As a result, her reports from the earliest days of Telluride, Toronto, Mill Valley and the Sundance festivals found their way into what was then the "Industry"-centric Times.
Moving online, she was chief film critic for Microsoft's invaluable Cinemania from its birth to its death, 4 ½ years later. She has also contributed coverage, essays and interviews to Interview, Elle, Premiere, Film Comment, Variety, the San Francisco Examiner, the Seattle Weekly, London Telegraph's Weekend magazine, Canada's Globe and Mail American Film Magazine and the New York Times.
Affiliated with the National Society of Film Critics, FIPRESCI (the International Film Critics Association) and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1981-95), she has taught Critical Writing at UCLA and has been a jury member at the film festivals of Berlin, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hawaii, Manila, Seattle, Aspen, Sundance/Park City, Taos, Banff and Palm Springs. In 1987, she was given the Vesta Award for Journalism for her contribution to the arts in Southern California. She wrote the narration for Chuck Workman's "The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Film" for Bravo, and in 2004 wrote the critical essay for the DVD of Horton Foote's Tomorrow for Home Vision Entertainment.
Having moved to Washington in 1996, she now reviews for the Seattle Weekly.
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"To Die For"
When you find a sentence like this, from author/confidante Faye Resnick's hastily written book on her deceased gal pal: Nicole Brown Simpson -- Private diary of a life interrupted you worry that there's no room left in the world for satire.
"Nicole and I shared a
dream," Resnick writes. "We wanted to stop being male-dependent, give up alcohol and drugs and open up a Starbucks coffee
house."
Not to worry. To Die For is here, proof that great satire is alive, and as wickedly useful as ever.
With its look at a media-nurtured life, To Die For is merciless, insightful, unforgiving and almost unbearably delicious. It's shaped with the kind of brilliant funniness not seen since the Pythons wobbled out of sight.
The screenplay, based on Joyce Maynard's novel about a real New England murder, is by Buck Henry, a man who takes no prisoners in matters of social observation. Gus Van Sant is the director, perfect for a faintly bent point of view and with a proven eye (Drugstore Cowboy) for exquisitely awful detail. It's a great bounce-back from whatever afflicted Van Sant's judgment on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.
Their co-conspirator is Nicole Kidman, bubblingly beautiful as a cherry coke, in a performance so smart, so brutally attuned to her subject that she fairly takes the breath away. She's Suzanne Maretto, forgive me, Suzanne Stone -- the luscious Kidman pronounces it like a benediction. Suzanne is a woman who clings to her professional name even though, as yet, she barely has a profession.
She's a New England small-town knockout on the road to her destiny: an anchor chair. Somewhere. So far, she's bulldozed her way into a job at the town's cable-access television station, about 4 watts with the look of a used-car dealership. She's also married Larry (Matt Dillon), the town hunk, a sweet man with almost no perceptible shelf life.
No matter; Suzanne has already
"gifted" him with a tape of You Can Be the One for his birthday. Now she just has to fend off the hopes of his well-meaning Italian parents (Dan Hedaya, as the local tavern keeper, Maria Tucci as his wife) for grandchildren. She should also be a little wary of Larry's sister Janice (Illeana Douglas), the only soul in Little Hope, New Hampshire, to see right straight through her.
Our vision of Suzanne, resplendent in every pastel polka-dot under the sun, deserves some attention. Remember the name Beatix Aruna Pasztor, a Hungarian-born wizard of costume design. She was behind the look of the characters from Drugstore Cowboy, American Heart, The Fisher King and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, a movie where the costumes were what was worth watching.
Here, she tells us everything about Suzanne Stone, her idols, her dreams, her vision of herself. This is brilliant stuff. One might hope that in the same way the costume branch of the Academy came through for the designers of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, it would remember Pasztor next year.
The other part of To Die For's subversive delight comes from its up close and personal look at Suzanne's mind, a small and fuzzy place nurtured entirely by television and tabloids. It's a place of self-help and maximizing your potential. Mr. Gorbachev failed in that regard, Suzanne believes.
"He would still be running the country if he had that big purple thing taken
off."
Having worn down the TV station's two employees into letting her do the weather, Suzanne's career has its toehold. But, fatally for him, Suzanne comes to believe that Larry is not exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger to her Maria Shriver. It may not be the screenplay's strongest line of reasoning, but Suzanne's and Kidman's assurance is potent enough to sweep any demurs firmly under the carpet.
Searching cunningly for the means to rid herself of poor Larry, Suzanne takes a long look at three of her protégés from the local high school, the only ones to sign up for her documentary interviews,
"Teens Speak Out."
They are a benighted trio, but it's clear that Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix) and Russell (Casey Affleck) will do anything for her, especially when the bait is sex. To Lydia (Alison Folland), Suzanne offers an even crueler fantasy: The awkward, dumpy girl can be her best friend.
In a cast bursting with perfectly realized characters, newcomer Folland is heartbreaking, but Van Sant may be at his most inventive in what he's gotten from Phoenix, River's younger brother (nee Leaf.) Dreamy Jimmy has one focus, he's like the young monkey that mothers hurry their kids away from at the zoo, with incomplete explanations for what he's doing. The outlet for all his barely-contained libido becomes Suzanne. Why? He rummages for that one:
"She's. . . so clean."
It's a stunning, naked performance, a little frightening too, because it's impossible to spot the line between character and actor. From this, one would have every reason to suspect he might be the most dazzling of what is apparently a covey of natural actors.
Framing the movie is the videotape Suzanne is making, confiding to it, and us,
"All of what I've learned." Not only the real story behind Larry's unfortunate demise, but the kernel of Suzanne's personal philosophy, half Andy Warhol, half Richard Nixon:
"You're not anyone in America unless you're on TV. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching. If people are
watching," she says reassuringly, "it makes you a better person."
It's doubtful that To Die For will make us better people. Happier ones, though.
© 1995 by Sheila Benson. All Rights Reserved.
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