Rent To Die For (1995)

Docudrama - To Die For review by JD

This is directed in part as a documentary, based (loosely I'm guessing) on a murderess Pamela Stuart, and part as a drama. Nicole Kidman plays the lead who portrays a vacuous narcissistic TV presenter who ultimately kills her husband for wanting her to have children. The problem is that no matter how well Nicole plays this part it is about an empty person. Indeed the better she plays it the less interesting it becomes. To make this film even vaguely watchable the character has to be changed preferable the director van Sant and the screen writer Buck Henry.

Kidman, Phoenix, and a Grudge I'm Reconsidering - To Die For review by griggs

There's one Van Sant film that's lodged itself so deep in my cortex that I flinch whenever his name comes up, which isn't fair on the rest of his filmography — this one included.

To Die For turns out to be the exception. Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, a local weather presenter with ambitions the size of a satellite dish, and she's magnificent — brittle, blank-eyed, terrifyingly sincere. Joaquin Phoenix, barely out of his teens, gives Jimmy a puppyish, easily-led glow that makes the whole seduction plausible — probably the best piece of casting in the film. The satire has real teeth too; it's the kind of funny that leaves a mark rather than a smile.

The film I can't forgive is built on a real death, though it treats that death with total, mumbling solemnity. Watching this one turn a real murder into a punchline stirs the old discomfort right back up, even mid-laugh. Still, discomfort and all, this is the one that might finally push the other film off the top shelf of my brain.