To Die For (1995)

Time for a bit of a palate cleanser, I think, in the form of Gus Van Sant's small but perfectly formed black comedy To Die For. It's the perfect antidote to all that bloating and tinsel and CGI, running at an hour and three quarters but passing in an eyeblink.

We start at the end of the affair, with the opening credits rolling over a background of newspaper footage detailing the implication of weathergirl Suzanne Maretto in her husband's murder. For reasons which only become clear far later on, the narrative here isn't strictly linear; it follows a fairly straight trajectory as it describes Suzanne's meeting with and marriage to one Larry Maretto, but isn't afraid to take the odd detour along the way.

The majority of these detours are to an interview with Suzanne herself, played by Nicole Kidman as one of cinema's truly memorable monsters. Endlessly coquettish but tightly wound, Suzanne seems to think that a life lived off-camera is a life only half lived, if at all. Annoyingly, however, she's managed to land up married to sweet-natured Italian homebody Larry (Matt Dillon), who wants nothing more than to settle down, run the family restaurant and have a litter of kids. Given the social unacceptability of divorce, really, what's a girl to do other than recruit a bunch of no-hopers from the local high school and convince them to bump him off, leaving her to frame them and make her name and a tidy sum of cash from selling a documentary about it all?

To Die For is an easy film to love, thanks to Buck Henry's smart, witty script and a bunch of killer performances. Kidman dazzles, of course, in the sort of villain role that has now become her trademark - traces of Suzanne can clearly be seen in the terrifying Marisa Coulter from The Golden Compass. The most frightening thing about Suzanne, however, is how believable she is - I defy you to listen to her voice and watch her mannerisms and not be reminded of somebody you know. This isn't operatic evil, it's the sort of small-scale, banal self-delusion that causes emotional and physical harm in homes and workplaces across the country every day of the year.

The film isn't a solo effort, however, with even the minor characters benefiting from careful casting and a real sense of depth. My favourite was Alison Folland's Lydia, one of the few completely likeable characters of the piece, so achingly lonely that you can't help but wish her well. Her co-conspirators, meanwhile, are played by Casey Affleck and an unsurprisingly effective Joaquin Phoenix.

Only as the movie draws on does it slowly dawn on us that the heroes and villains of the piece aren't so cut and dried as we might think. Suzanne is vain and stupid and eventually murderous, but then, Larry's family are parochial, oppressively traditional and, er, eventually murderous. I'm not really sure if there's any sort of moral to be drawn from this, in fact, other than that most people are arseholes but that the smarter arseholes are sometimes able to get away with it.

With this in mind, please accept the following New Year's wish from me: Here's hoping that this year, all the arseholes you meet will be stupider arseholes than you.