DVD: To Die For

Before I start this review I feel I should provide a bit of context. I’ve been forced to watch this film twice during my film lectures after being incredibly unimpressed on first viewing. I felt the intense need to slate it when on second viewing my lecturer decided to pause it every 30 seconds telling us how every scene had so many meanings. So yeah here we go...

To Die For is a film that was released in the mid-90s about a ditzy blonde aspiring journalist, Suzanne Stone, played by Nicole Kidman. She hits the high of her career when she is made the weather girl at her local news station but believes she can do better. Throughout the film she destroys many peoples lives in her attempts to become a star only partially achieving her goal.
The people she destroys include her husband played woodenly by Matt Dillion and some outcast teenagers. One of these teenagers is played by Jaquin Phoenix who is by far the best thing in it, not that thats saying much among the other performances in the film. I mean seriously Nicole Kidman is amazingly unlikable and so impossible to emphasise with that you’ll probably wish her dead by film’s end. Her husband could have a been a likable character who the audience are able to sympathise seeing as he’s misused then murdered. At least you would if Matt Dillion had played the character as if he was a human being as opposed to a cardboard cut-out.

The style of this film is incredibly erratic switching from the childlike narrative by Suzanne to a far more serious tone when she encourages teenagers to murder her husband. Suzanne’s sweet little narrative as she lies to a camera bookend the film being inserted sporadically right up to the film’s ‘tragic’ conclusion. This can be attributed to Gus Van Sant who doesn’t do a very good job of directing - though this could be attributed to bad writing or the terrible acting - this film probably being his worst.
I keep trying to find something to like about this film to make this review more balanced but I’m finding it so hard to do so. Phoenix puts in an relatively good performance and is by far the best thing on offer and some of the supporting cast are not too bad. But overall this film is a great example of mediocre acting, fairly bad direction and basically poor storytelling.