★★☆☆☆
Two Stars
Jennifer Aniston goes without make-up or a laughter track to demonstrate her “serious” side in Cake, a half-baked sugary affair that spends a little too long in the oven without ever really rising. If there weren’t enough cake-based puns packed into that sentence for you, you’ll be even more disappointed with the distractingly absent eponymous cake from the actual film itself, at least not until the final act – and even then it just seems a little bit shoehorned – a little bit half-baked.
Aniston gives it her all as Claire, a woman whose chronic pain and scars (both physical and emotional) seem to give her a get-out-of-jail-free card to treat everyone in her life as if they owe her something. Wallowing in her depressive slump and dissatisfied with the corny condescension of her support group, Claire becomes fixated on the suicide of one of the group’s members – a young woman named Nina (Anna Kendrick), who threw herself off a motorway bridge. Claire never really knew Nina, but she’s compelled by the conviction of her suicide – much to the annoyance of the group’s leader (a woefully underused Felicity Huffman), who she blackmails into providing her with Nina’s home address.
We never really understand why Claire is so determined to seek out Nina’s residence, but her conveniently hunky widower Roy (Sam Worthington) seems to compensate for any incredulities we may have. Before long, Claire and Roy strike up what at first seems the most inappropriate of friendships, but slowly develops into an almost touching connection between two very lonely people. But things aren’t destined to go that smoothly for Claire, who begins seeing whacky hallucinations of Nina’s ghost – taunting and shaming her very existence and confronting Claire with the big question of why she too hasn’t killed herself. It’s all rather bleak.
Instilling a little bit of sanity and regulation into Claire’s life is her housemaid Silvana, in a scene-stealing turn from Adriana Barraza. Silvana knows Claire better than anyone, but she somehow refrains from asking Claire what Nina so bluntly does: “why are you such a c***?”. Instead, Silvana waits on Claire hand-and-foot, patiently accepting her pain, profanity, and pill-popping – she even makes bizarre dangerous trips to Mexico to provide Claire with drugs. But even through Silvana’s tolerant eyes, it’s often hard to see Claire as anything but pissy.
The truth, as we slowly learn, is that Claire pushes people away. After her tragic accident she loses everything dear to her and is henceforth hesitant to bring herself close to anyone again. There’s a well-worn Ebenezer Scrooge arc at Claire’s centre, and her journey is a little bit too predictable. Cake was clearly intended to be something of an “ugly” role for Aniston à la Charlize Theron in Monster – perhaps even an Oscar-fishing ploy – but a thin script and thinner yet characters forbid her from ever receiving the support she requires.
Claire’s abrasive personality ultimately proves too much. It’s a sincere attempt at throwing vanity to the wind for Aniston, but there are too many well-trodden tropes and clichés crammed into Cake’s overwrought running time and the film enjoys teasing out its subplots a little too gradually. The simple fact is that it’s hard to like a character like Claire, whose contempt and short-temper topple over the edge of “black comedy” and become something altogether more annoying. It’s a recipe that just doesn’t work – the proof is in the pudding.
