Ferdy on Films, etc.

To Die For (1995)
Director: Gus Van Sant

By Marilyn Ferdinand

Suzanne Stone Maretto: It's nice to live in a country where life, liberty... and all the rest of it still stand for something.

Suzanne Stone Maretto: You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.

The above quotes pretty much sum up that always-plump target—American culture—in Buck Henry’s wickedly funny adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s book To Die For. Suzanne Stone Maretto (Nicole Kidman) is a dumb, narcissistic blonde for whom TV sounds like her only chance to be a good person and who doesn’t really relate to those greater goods of life and liberty as intended by America’s founders. She intends to be a better person even if she has to kill someone to do it.

The beautiful Suzanne has wanted to be on television ever since she first saw herself at about the age of 5 captured by her father’s live camera hook-up to the family Stone’s TV set. Out with her girlfriends one day, Suzanne immediately attracts the attention of nice-guy Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon). They start to date. The members of his close-knit Italian family, and especially his sister Janice (Illeana Douglas), don’t think too much of Suzanne, but Larry is convinced she is the girl of his dreams—delicate, fragile, and a “volcano" in the sack—the perfect madonna/whore of every Catholic boy’s fantasy. He marries her and prepares for a life of Italian wedded bliss.

Suzanne, of course, is still avid in her pursuit of her career. She attends a meeting of NBC affiliates while on her honeymoon, where she gets some advice from the weasly keynote speaker (George Segal)—offering sex for a job is a great way to the top.

The Marettos acquire a condo, a red Mustang, and a tiny Pomeranian puppy Suzanne names Walter after Walter Cronkite and from which she is rarely separated. She reads about a job as a glorified gofer at local cable-access station WWEN. The station manager, Ed Grant (Wayne Knight), and his assistant call her “gangbusters"—not because she puts out (indeed she tears up a letter of reference she wrote for herself that offers sexual favors, an idea she got from Segal's character)—but because she has ideas for the station about every 10 minutes. Eventually, Ed gives Suzanne an on-air job as the weather bunny.

Given an inch, she goes for a mile by getting a local high school principal (Buck Henry) to allow her to shoot a documentary with any students who volunteer. Three burnouts sign up—crude Russel (Casey Affleck), budding lesbian Lydia (Alison Folland), and smitten Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix). Her footage shows their relative inability to put two words together in a sentence, but Suzanne will spin gold from straw if she has to work on the tapes all night.

Meanwhile, Larry and his family are impatient with Suzanne’s lack of interest in popping out babies. Larry confronts Suzanne one night and suggests that she hang up her go-nowhere weather reports and help him out at the family restaurant. When Suzanne comprehends exactly what he means, a strange glow comes into her usually plasticine eyes, and we know we are being prepared for murder most foul.

Suzanne isn’t very learned, but when it comes to providing motivation—sex, and lots of it, to Jimmy—and manipulating Lydia and Russel to keep herself about a step removed from the murder, she’s as “gangbusters" as ever. Her dream of being on TV—this time as a prime figure in a murder investiga- tion—is fulfilled, but she overplays her hand. In the end, she becomes the subject of a documentary on the infamous crime—a fate she would have loved had she only known about it.

Van Sant provides the perfect structure for a film about media fame—interviews with all of the principals in the murder case, who tell their version of Larry and Suzanne’s life and times. Omniscient narration fills in the blanks, and Suzanne herself gets her say on a self-made video.

Kidman plays Suzanne with the perfect amount of paper-thin charm, vicious self-interest, and stupidity. Her wardrobe and make-up make her look like a lollipop—long, slim legs topped with rainbow-bright mini-skirted suits of shocking pink, lemon yellow, lime green, and baby blue—sickly sweet, devoid of nutritional value, and likely to rot your teeth in the short time it takes to dissolve. Suzanne has used her looks and sexual prowess to get her way all her life—right after her wedding, she whispers in her father’s ear, “I’ll never find another man like you, Daddy," As Mr. Stone, Kurtwood Smith assumes a bewildered look on his face at this remark, suggesting that Suzanne’s not just a vain, shallow tart, but rather something closer to a maneating psychopath.

Incestuous overtones continue as Janice competes with Suzanne for attention. The look Janice gives Larry when he interrupts her reverie about her small but important solo as a skater in the Ice Follies to announce Suzanne’s new job is one of jealous betrayal. I laughed when Larry’s parents (Dan Hedaya and Maria Tucci) thought the news was that Suzanne was pregnant—a stereotype, but ringing so true in this film.

The entire supporting cast is phenomenally good (even including a brief, but priceless appearance by David Cronenberg). Phoenix is the perfect sex-besotted burnout who seems to have gone a little insane in prison. I was deeply impressed with Folland as a grimy-haired lackey who says over and over again that Suzanne is her friend, “the only friend I had." It’s not hard to feel sympathy for her and Jimmy, but the caustic wit and sexiness of the script keep the film’s tongue planted firmly in cheek and between legs.

A visually stunning satire, each moment is real, even at its most absurd, as the cast relishes the wonderful lines they are given. There are so many great moments, I can't begin to do them all justice here. I’m so glad that before Nicole Kidman became an Actress, she had the sense to stretch her considerable comedic muscles. Now that she is a bit past her prime for leading lady parts, I hope she’ll return to comedies worthy of her talents. l