Cake quirky, not quite filling

Ain’t that Jennifer Aniston grand? Just when we all thought that she was going to spend the rest of her post-Friends days acting as strippers and horrible bosses and various other sundry characters in drippy, forgettable romantic comedies. “I’m a real actress!” we imagine her screaming. “Don’t you remember me in The Good Girl from 2002?”

The answer is no, but luckily we don’t have to. Aniston has returned with her ‘once every decade’ attempt to demonstrate her dramatic prowess in an indie film, this time in a quirky, dark piece called Cake. It has lots going for it, including good characters and characterizations, excellent writing and an interesting story. What it doesn’t have going for it, sadly, is plausibility, and most of that bounces back to how Aniston is not really that much of an actor.

She plays Claire, a woman with more than her fair share of problems. The movie starts with her in a chronic pain support group that is in the middle of a discussion on the recent suicide of one of its members. Claire has visible scars on her face and a snarly attitude that does as much to demonstrate her emotional pain as her wonderfully colourful vocabulary. Because of this, the group rejects her, leaving her to linger in misery in her big L.A. house with only her Mexican maid Silvana (Adriana Barraza) to tend to her needs. We learn that she has an ex-husband, that she’s addicted to painkillers, and that she has vivid hallucinatory dreams of Nina (Anna Kendrick), the woman who killed herself.

All in all, this is not really the kind of movie you would want to go to if you’re having a spell of the winter blues. Still, if you can deal with the depressing scenes of this poor woman writhing in agony from her physical and emotional traumas, you do get treated to some excellent lines of dialogue. Screenwriter Patrick Tobin has a pretty good technique for demonstrating the essence of characters through their own spoken words. Good for him.

The problem still lies with Aniston. We can overlook numerous story flaws such as ‘what compels her to become involved with Nina’s widower Roy (Sam Worthington)’ or ‘what is her essential motivation to stay alive even though all of her actions make it seem like she wants to die’ or even ‘how can she afford such a gorgeous, huge house in Los Angeles when it’s quite clear that she doesn’t work and may never again.’

It all boils down to the fact that this is Aniston’s show. She’s the star that carries the entire, flawed narrative. And we don’t believe her. She limps like a pro and groans the way that people with chronic pain and addictions groan and she doesn’t have the best hair because we, the audience, are meant to understand that her character doesn’t care about that stuff, but it’s still Aniston up there on the screen. There’s no suspension of disbelief. We might like watching her go through her motions and read her lines – and we do – but it’s not something that’s going to win her any awards or anything. Perhaps somebody else should have been cast in this darkly funny movie. Anybody else, but her.