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Jennifer Aniston looks considerably more glamorous here than she does in Cake
BEvery year, when the Oscar nominations are announced, it seems that someone worthy winds up being snubbed. This year, that “honor” goes to Jennifer Aniston, whose widely acclaimed turn in Cake, a film unseen by most of the general public prior to the nominations, was ignored by the Academy. Sadly, the Oscar voters got it wrong; Aniston’s performance is stunning. The movie itself, however, is not so stunning.
Cake is a character study of Claire Bennett (Aniston), a woman in constant pain, both physical and mental, resulting from a sever auto accident. She’s hooked on pain killers, her marriage fell apart, and she often thinks about killing herself. Her maid and occasional chauffeur Silvana (Adriana Barraza) is the only person who still puts up with her. Ironically, though, it’s the suicide of Nina (Anna Kendrick) a young woman in her support group, that gives Claire some purpose in her life, as she becomes obsessed with finding out why Nina killed herself.
Aniston’s performance in Cake is masterful on a number of levels. Every movement Claire makes can be agonizing, so the character, and the actress, must carefully plan out simple actions like standing up to minimize the pain. Claire reacts defensively to her pain, with anger and caustic sarcasm, that quickly eliminates most sympathy for her character. But she still manages to show just enough glimpses of her former self to explain Silvana’s standing by her side. However, with the exception of Aniston’s and Barraza’s performances, Cake is often routine disease-of-the-week material that’s sometimes too whimsical for its own good. In particular, dream sequences in which Aniston talks at length with Kendrick’s ghost simply don’t work. Aniston’s performance is enough to keep viewers interested in Cake, but, like Claire herself, the movie seemingly tries to drive away viewers, in this case, by a storyline that’s not worthy of its lead actress.
Continue reading on Cake: Mini-Review
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