NEW YORK—Ah, to deglam. It’s one of the surest shortcuts to newfound artistic appreciation: a bedraggled deviation into dowdy drama by a beautiful star. Acclaim by way of sweatpants.
“Cake,” in which Jennifer Aniston plays a bitterly grieving, caustically acerbic and chronically pained Los Angeles woman, belongs to a contrived kind of low-budget movie—drab and depressed, but predictably poignant—just as artificial as any blockbuster convention.
As Claire Simmons, Aniston has facial scars, stringy hair and a slightly frumpier frame. But, this is also a very recognizable Aniston, whose deserved appeal has always depended on marrying her pert, all-American girl-next-door with glib sarcasm. In “Cake,” she has turned up her cynicism nob as far as it will go.
She lives largely holed up in her handsomely designed suburban L.A. home, popping pills, struggling with sleeplessness and haunted by appearances of a friend (Anna Kendrick) from her self-help group who committed suicide by leaping from a highway overpass. “Way to go, Nina!” Claire announces to the group, prompting its leader (Felicity Huffman) to show her the door.
In pursuit of pills
Claire’s Mexican housekeeper Silvana (the exceptional Adriana Barraza) cooks food she won’t eat, and shuttles her around town, usually in the pursuit of more pills.
Claire lies reclined in the passenger seat, laid flat by back pain from the vaguely referenced car crash that left her scarred. Whatever the particulars, the accident’s trauma is eventually clear enough: Claire lost her son in it.
The audience is tested, too. “Cake,” directed by Daniel Barnz from a screenplay by Patrick Tobin, is in many ways less about Claire’s threshold for pain than our tolerance for hers.
The film slowly builds to the always-expected catharsis. Barnz hides all images of Claire’s son until one late, crushing jolt of pathos, a decision that could be said to be manipulative.
But, the blankness to Claire’s history also reflects the point of the film: We don’t see the wounds people are carrying around, even in the broad daylight of the California sun. Would we have stuck it out with Claire?