To Die For

Infobox Film
name = To Die For


caption = Original film poster
director = Gus Van Sant
writer = Buck Henry (screenplay)
Joyce Maynard (novel)
music = Danny Elfman
starring = Nicole Kidman
Matt Dillon
Joaquin Phoenix
Illeana Douglas
Wayne Knight
producer = Laura Ziskin
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = October 6, 1995
runtime = 106 min.
country = UK
USA
language = English
budget = $20 million (estimated)
amg_id = 1:134789
imdb_id = 0114681

"To Die For" is a 1995 film written by Buck Henry, based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Maynard (ISBN 0-595-26939-7), and directed by Gus Van Sant. It stars Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon and Joaquin Phoenix. Major supporting roles feature Illeana Douglas, Wayne Knight, Casey Affleck, Dan Hedaya and Alison Folland. Kidman was nominated for a BAFTA and won a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

The film includes cameo appearances by George Segal, David Cronenberg, author Maynard, and screenwriter Henry. It features original music by Danny Elfman. The film's tagline is: "All she wanted was a little attention."

"To Die For" is a mixture of styles, combining a traditional drama with darkly comic direct-to-camera monologues by Kidman's character, and mockumentary interviews, some tragic, with certain of the other characters in the film.

The film (and the novel it is based on) were both inspired by the facts that emerged during the trial of Pamela Smart, a teacher who was imprisoned for seducing a young man and convincing him to kill her husband. However, the film is considerably more satirical and arch than Maynard's comparatively straightforward treatment of the story.

Plot summary

Suzanne Stone (Kidman) is a young, beautiful, and ruthless woman who dreams of being a world famous news anchor despite her rather limited intellect and talent. To that end, she marries Larry Maretto (Dillon) because she believes his Mafia connections will keep her financially comfortable, and starts climbing the network news ladder, beginning as a weather girl at a local cable station. When Larry, who truly loves Suzanne, starts asking her to take time off from her career to start a family, she immediately plots to get rid of him, seducing a high school student, Jimmy Emmett (Phoenix), and strong-arming him and his friends into killing Larry. The story becomes national news, and Suzanne finally has the stardom she has always wanted — while Jimmy goes to prison for life.

In the end, however, Suzanne gets her comeuppance when Larry's family has her murdered. The hitman (director David Cronenberg in a cameo) lures Suzanne away from her home by pretending to be interested in publishing her life story, then buries her under a frozen lake, her favourite spot, where she once skated. In a final irony, Jimmy's unassuming friend Lydia Mertz (Folland), whom the waspy Suzanne always dismissed as "trailer trash", gains national attention by telling her side of the story in a television interview, becoming rich and famous. The final scene shows Larry's sister Janice (Douglas), practicing her figure skating on the frozen lake where her body is hidden, a symbol of biting justice considering Suzanne's habit of overshadowing Janice throughout the movie.

This movie was based on a true case in which a school media services coordinator named Pamela Smart enlisted three of her students to murder her husband, Gregory Smart. Billy Flynn was the trigger man when he was only 16-years-old, after having had a sexual relationship with Pamela. Pam Smart is still in prison, serving a life sentence. Flynn is also in prison but serving a lesser sentence. The trial was the first fully televised case in the United States.

Katherine Ramsland of Crime Library describes the movie as an example of a work displaying women with antisocial traits; Ramsland describes Suzanne as a "manipulator extraordinaire" who harms people through third parties. [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/women/women_killers2/4.html]

Cast

Critical reception

In her review in the "New York Times", Janet Maslin called the film "an irresistible black comedy and a wicked delight" and added, " [it] takes aim at tabloid ethics and hits a solid bull's-eye, with Ms. Kidman's teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters. The target is broad, but Gus Van Sant's film is too expertly sharp and funny for that to matter; instead, it shows off this director's slyness better than any of his work since "Drugstore Cowboy" . . . Both Mr. Van Sant and Ms. Kidman have reinvented themselves miraculously for this occasion, which brings out the best in all concerned." [ [http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=990CEFDC103BF934A1575AC0A963958260 "New York Times" review] ]

Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" said of Kidman, " [she] brings to the role layers of meaning, intention and impulse. Telling her story in close-up - as she does throughout the film - Kidman lets you see the calculation, the wheels turning, the transparent efforts to charm that succeed in charming all the same . . . her beauty and magnetism are electric. Undeniably she belongs on camera, which means it's equally undeniable that Suzanne belongs on camera. That in itself is an irony, a commentary or both." [ [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1995/10/06/DD13291.DTL "San Francisco Chronicle" review] ]

References

External links

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