Product: To Die For (1995)
Rating: 5.0
The Perfect Film for a Celebrity-Obsessed Culture
"To Die For" is a great little gem of a movie that, in my opinion, ranks as one of the best dark comedies of the 1990s. Nicole Kidman, in one of her finest performances, is stunning as Suzanne Maretto - her maiden name is Stone - a completely self-absorbed, amoral, and utterly ruthless young woman who will let nothing stand in the way of her obtaining her goal of being a "television news star". The film is shot in the style of a slightly wacky TV documentary, which only adds to the fun, as we see the "post-tragedy" interviews with those who were involved with the late Miss Stone. Stone is an attractive but cold-blooded blonde in a small New England city who is desperate to become a celebrity on a national TV News Network. As proof of her warped psyche, she tells the audience "You're a nobody if you're not on TV" - which unfortunately does seem to accurately describe the feelings of many people these days. She's also determined to move up the social ladder in her little town, and so as the film begins she seduces and marries the handsome quarterback of the high school football team, Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), the most popular boy in town. Larry's sister despises Suzanne and sees right through her facade, but he is so entranced he doesn't listen. Larry - a traditional, decent, but old-fashioned young man - goes to work in his father's pizzeria, and expects someday to inherit the family business. Suzanne, meanwhile, gets a job as the weather forecaster for the local rinky-dink TV station, and begins to have dreams of glory. One of the darkly funny aspects of this film is that for all of Suzanne's scheming and ruthlessness she's not very bright, and her attempts to sound and act "sophisticated" are often hilariously inept. One scene in which she invites her boss's family to dinner and tries to impress them by using "fancy" French words (which she hilariously and cluelessly mispronounces) is priceless. When her faithful but old-fashioned husband asks her to quit her job at the TV station and help him with the family's pizzeria, she decides he's "impeding" her career and that she'll have to kill him. So she seduces an underage teenage geek (hilariously played by a very young Joaquin Phoenix), has a torrid sexual affair with him, and convinces him to murder her hubby. At first she uses the shock of the murder to obtain further publicity - "you've got to think of your career first" - from the local and state media. Unfortunately, her underage love affair is discovered and she is ruined. Ever undaunted, she begins plotting her comeback, but Larry's family (they are Italian, after all), has a little surprise planned for their murderous in-law. Kidman's performance is dead-on - she plays Stone as a parody of the type of person who will do ANYTHING - even commit murder - to get on television and become "somebody". The supporting cast is also excellent. The most troubling part of this film is that it was loosely based on a real story - an attractive New Hampshire schoolteacher who by most appearances had everything seduced a fifteen-year-old student and convinced him to kill her husband - apparently so she could leave her hometown and try to become "famous" in the big city. "To Die For" may seem like a delicious but improbable story - but it's really not all that far from today's news headlines. Ouch!