A dead woman tells her support group that her only wish is to be able to bake her son a cake. Such is the origin of the title of this film starring Jennifer Aniston. See it if you can.
Cake (Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Sam Worthington, Anna Kendrick, Felicity Huffman, Chris Messina, Mamie Gummer) – Jennifer Aniston never gets credit for being a fine actress. She is pigeonholed in most people’s minds as Rachel from Friends and many never break out of it. Now 45, she takes acting seriously and, to prove it, she produced Cake, a terribly serious film about pain, grief, loneliness, and hopelessness.
Jen plays Claire Bennett, a victim of a car accident that took the life of her child and that almost killed her. She is scarred from head to toe, in constant physical agony, and is hooked on pain medication that dulls her physical and emotional pain. The movie opens with Claire in a support group where she is the outlier. One of the members has just committed suicide, and Claire seems the only one not reacting emotionally. When Annette, the leader of the support group (played by Felicity Huffman), kicks her out of the group, she barely reacts. But she becomes obsessed with the suicide; begins to see the woman, Nina (played by Anna Kendrick), in her drug-induced hallucinations; and considers suicide herself. She visits Nina’s husband, Roy (Sam Worthington), and meets their son. Roy is as emotionally scarred as Claire is physically. They form an uncomfortable bond more out of convenience than anything else. They need each other, not as lovers but as crutches.
Meanwhile, her maid and caretaker, Silvana (Adriana Barraza), is Claire’s conscience and unwitting enabler. No one else can get through to her; not her estranged husband (played by Chris Messina), her physical therapist (Mamie Gummer) or Sam. Claire just wants the drugs, which sends us to a clinic and on a road trip to Tijuana. Silvana drives her everywhere and Claire won’t sit up … either because it causes her too much pain or, more likely, because she just can’t handle looking out a car windshield any more.
The story is well paced, dribbling information about the accident and the characters. To Aniston’s credit, she lets herself look beaten, battered, and weak. She groans with agony with every movement. Her face looks drawn and pained. She walks stiffly and haltingly, her neck is unable to swivel. No wonder she has been nominated for Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards as Best Actress. Like Charlize Theron in
Monster, she allows herself to look unattractive (which is very difficult for the one of the most gorgeous women in the world).
But the best performance might belong to the Adriana Barraza as Silvana. An Oscar nominee for Babel, she plays this multi-dimensional character as caring, concerned, committed, pitying, and loving. But Aniston is no slouch.
Having just opened nationally with earnings of less than $1 million this past weekend, it will be interesting to see if this painful movie finds an audience. For people who don’t mind seeing a downer of a film that is filled with fine performances, make sure you see Cake.