In To Die For, Nicole Kidman portrays Suzanne Stone who is an ambitious woman who can do anything to be on TV. She is pretty but she is not particularly smart or bright. Suzanne has an obsession about being a celebrity, more specifically a famous news reporter. She works as a weather presenter for a local TV channel in a small town called Little Hope in New Hampshire. However she is not very well known even in her local town.

She is married to an Italian American called Larry whose family owns a local Italian restaurant. Larry’s family is known and respected by the Italian American community. She sees him as a nice guy who she can benefit from but soon realises he is just an obstacle in her way to fame and she needs to get rid of him. There is no way that she would do this by her own. Therefore, she comes up with an idea.

Suzanne decides to make a documentary about teenage lives. She visits a local high school and finds three teenagers; Jimmy, Russell and Lydia who were interested in her project. They seem delighted by the fact that a beautiful TV personality offers them the chance to be on TV and takes them seriously. By this point, it was not hard for Suzanne to manipulate the teenagers into killing her husband.

She chooses the weakest one who happens to be Jimmy portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix to seduce and manipulate his pure feelings for her and use him to get rid of her husband. Soon after, Jimmy falls in love with Suzanne and he is ready to do anything for her even if it is murdering her husband. On the first year marriage anniversary of Suzanne and Larry, Lydia gets the gun, Jimmy kills Larry and Russell helps Jimmy.

The film, is full of zoom ins to the faces of characters it emphasises their moods at that time and enables us to understand their true feelings by just looking at their face expressions.

Now, Suzanne is free but that is not enough for her. She wants to make it to Hollywood. She turns her back to the teenagers who fulfilled her wish to get rid of her husband. She soon packs up and leaves to meet a Hollywood producer who can make her dream come true. However it is revealed in the film that he was in fact an American Italian hitman hired by Larry’s father because he was aware of what Suzanne did. At the end, we see the dead body of Suzanne lying under ice. This reminds us the scene where Larry’s sister Janice described her first impression of Suzanne with one single word which was “cold”. She foreshadowed the ending of the movie. Now she is lying under cold ice but Janice is on the surface, skating just like some kind of victory.

After the incident, Russell is sentenced to 16 years in prison and Jimmy is sentenced to 30 years. However Lydia was not charged. On the contrary, she is the one who becomes famous. She is interviewed at the end. Ironically, she claims she was invited as a guest to many talk shows such Oprah and Dr. Phil. Then the screen divides into many small screens showing Lydia. This is a metaphor which indicates that she will be on lots of TV channels and will become famous later on. This film is a great example of how intensive ambition can result in disaster.

personal ranking: 7.5/10