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If anyone ever doubts whether Nicole Kidman is a good actress, they should immediately be required to watch this outrageously wicked comedy from 1995, for which Kidman deservedly won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role. While director Gus Van Sant handles the fact-based satire with razor-sharp precision, Kidman delivers a deliciously devious performance as Suzanne Stone, a small-town New Hampshire housewife who fancies herself the next Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, Diane Sawyer, and Maria Shriver all rolled up into one meticulously coiffed package. So determined is she to have a successful career on TV that she'll stop at nothing--even the calculated murder of her husband (Matt Dillon)--to get the attention she feels entitled to. To carry out her scheme she recruits some unwitting local teenagers including one boy (Joaquin Phoenix, matching Kidman's excellence) whose infatuation with Suzanne leads to sexual escapades and predictably troublesome consequences. It's a satirical comedy in Van Sant's capable hands, but it's so close to tabloid reality that the film never seems implausible--which only gives it a funnier, more blood-chilling quality of humor. Featuring Illeanna Douglas, George Segal, and
Seinfeld alumnus Wayne Knight in memorable supporting roles, this is one of the best comedies of the '90s--especially if you prefer comedies with a decidedly darker edge.
--Jeff Shannon
From The New Yorker
Director Gus Van Sant's latest movie is his funniest, but also his least adventurous. Adapted by Buck Henry from Joyce Maynard's 1992 novel, it tells the story of Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman, pushy and perky), a suburban nobody who, bored with her husband (Matt Dillon), decides to become a somebody in the world of television. She joins a local station, starts to shoot a documentary about three schoolkids, and gradually lures them into her web. You expect Suzanne to ascend to great things, but the fame she craves turns out to be no less parochial than the town she despises. The film is smartly structured, and it's kicked along by a busy Danny Elfman score, but Van Sant's touch is uncertain: the story's satirical bite begins to loosen as his camera lingers more and more on the plain, disaffected teen-agers. One of them is played by Joaquin Phoenix, whose brother River was so extraordinary in "My Own Private Idaho"; it's as though Van Sant longs to recapture the wayward, carnal atmosphere of the earlier movie but finds himself locked in a smaller, more brittle project. The film does for him what "The Player" did for Altman: it proves his cleverness and the sharpness of his eye without ever giving him full rein. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
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