Cake is very much a performance piece, in the style of Wild. It is a film built around a fantastic central performance that lives or dies based on the strength of that performance. The film itself is almost irrelevant – a collection of familiar emotional and character beats given life by a stellar cast that are all present to support a lead actor offering what is clearly intended to be a career-defining (or even -defying) performance.
Cake is a movie that is carried by Jennifer Aniston’s superb and moving central performance as a woman living with chronic pain – literal and emotional. It is a movie that could easily seem crass or exploitive, focusing on a physically incapacitated and mentally damaged woman who is trying to piece her life back together. Director Daniel Barnz and writer Patrick Tobin find themselves walking a very fine line.
St. Jude, don’t make it bad…
Cake manages to stay on the right side of that line. Barnz might be a little fond of long tracking shots of Jennifer Aniston being driven through areas covered by foliage, and Tobin’s script occasionally seems like it is trying just a little bit too hard, but the film itself is comfortable enough to allow Aniston the spotlight. Cake is very much an actor’s vehicle, and it is unashamedly so.
Aniston does great work here, demonstrating the same credibility and vulnerability that she brought to The Good Girl, another example of the performer playing largely against type. Aniston fleshes out the character of Claire Bennett, taking an arc that is perhaps a little too familiar and too formulaic, and gives the role an emotional core that holds everything together. It is a great performance in a solid film.
It all goes rather swimmingly…
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: cake, daniel barnz, jennifer aniston, Movie, non-review review, patrick tobin, performance-driven, review | 2 Comments »
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