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Distraught, angry and addicted to painkillers... this is Friends star Jennifer Aniston as you've never seen her before - and she's a revelation: BRIAN VINER reviews Cake

By Brian Viner for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:21 EST, 19 February 2015 | Updated: 19:13 EST, 19 February 2015

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Cake (15)

Verdict: A sad slice of life

Rating:

Blackhat (15)

Verdict: Daft but stylish thriller

Rating:

Cake won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

It stars Jennifer Aniston, screamingly against type, as Claire Bennett, an angry, pain-racked woman, scarred physically and emotionally by an accident that we know was devastating yet about which, until the final few minutes, we are told very little.

The film, set in Los Angeles, starts in perhaps the most Southern Californian setting imaginable: a therapy group.

Not ten words of dialogue have passed before the dreaded ‘closure’ gets an airing, from a counsellor (played by Felicity Huffman) leading a discussion about Nina (Anna Kendrick), a former member of the group who has recently killed herself by jumping off a flyover.

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Emotional: Jennifer Aniston stars as Claire Bennett, an angry, pain-racked woman, scarred physically and emotionally by an accident

Claire is invited to contribute, but, more into blood-letting than hand-wringing, she upsets everyone by speaking too candidly about Nina’s suicide. When she gets home there is a voicemail message asking her to find another group, on account of her ‘anger issues’.

In her house, Claire winces and grimaces her way through the ordinary motions of everyday life, and I confess that I winced with her, partly out of empathy (if you’ve ever suffered back pain, you’ll watch this film with eyes narrowed and teeth gritted), but also in weary anticipation of what I thought was about to unfold: rehabilitation, restoration, redemption.

But I was wrong. Cake, written by Patrick Tobin and directed by Daniel Barnz, does not follow a predictable course. Claire starts angry and stays angry.

Her chronic pain does not ease. She alienates her physiotherapist as she has her psychotherapist, and we learn that in her deep unhappiness she has also pushed away her decent, concerned husband. Her sex life is confined to loveless trysts with the Mexican handyman.

Jennifer Aniston attends the 21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at The Shrine Auditorium last month

Meanwhile, she is addicted to painkillers, which she buys in industrial quantities in Tijuana, then smuggles back across the border.

She is driven there by her loyal Mexican housekeeper, Silvana (a terrific performance by Adriana Barraza), and always lies flat in the passenger seat, though that doesn’t stop her issuing directions.

The metaphor is clear; she can’t see where her life is heading either yet is desperate for some measure of control. By tiny increments things get better.

Haunted by visions of Nina, Claire connives a visit to the dead woman’s house, and gradually befriends her widower (Sam Worthington), whose fury with his wife for committing suicide does not stop him tenderly visiting her grave.

Cake has much to say about grief, and on the whole says it with intelligence and insight.

Why Cake? Well, a lavishly iced chocolate cake comes to symbolise Claire’s realisation that life contains pleasures even for those in desperate, debilitating pain. In its downbeat way, this is an optimistic film.

As for the very particular pain of not getting the Academy Award nomination that Aniston must surely have thought was in the bag, who knows how long that took to ease?

I think she probably should have been in the Best Actress running this weekend.

It was a brave choice of role and she rises to it brilliantly, using her timing as one of the better comic actresses of her generation not just to deliver some decidedly caustic wit, but also to convey, with real sensitivity, the tragedy of Claire’s situation.

As Claire is haunted by Nina, so, with Friends running on an endless global loop and plenty of average big-screen rom-coms behind her, is Aniston in a way still haunted by Rachel Green, the TV role that made her famous.

With this performance, even more than Aniston’s other departures from type (such as The Good Girl, 2002), Rachel has retreated just a little further into the ether.

Jennifer Aniston stars in emotional drama 'Cake'

Some things, however, never change. Blackhat is another dynamic, violent, intermittently exciting and occasionally preposterous crime thriller from Michael Mann, who made the superior Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004).

It stars Chris Hemsworth as floppy-fringed Nick Hathaway, the world’s most unlikely computer nerd, biceps bulging in tune with his brain, who can not only strangle an online virus, but can also kill a ruthless mercenary with a screwdriver.

But first the FBI has to spring him from high-security prison, where he is serving a long sentence for doing naughty things with his mouse.

Dynamic: Chris Hemsworth, Tang Wei and Holt McCallany star in Blackhat

They think he is the man to help them thwart a cyber-maniac, who has used his dastardly computer skills first to blow up a Chinese power station and then wreak havoc on U.S. trade exchanges.

Hathaway duly teams up with his old college room-mate, who, by happy coincidence, now works for the Chinese government’s cyber-warfare unit, and by even happier coincidence has a gorgeous sister, Lien (Tang Wei).

Lots of chases ensue — if nothing else, this film makes full use of all transport options, with planes, trains, cars, helicopters, speedboats and even escalators all getting a piece of the action — as Hathaway eventually tracks his man to Jakarta, easing up on the pursuit only for the odd romp with Lien.

There’s more style than substance to all this, and you can’t help feeling that Mann might be presenting his credentials to direct a future James Bond film, but it’s not without entertainment value.

Plus, of course, it has a resonance that Mann could hardly have anticipated. Fiendish enemies in the Far East? Cyber-hacking? Why, it’s practically the story of Sony Pictures.

And the Oscars will go to...

In the current spirit of masochism, let me put my own neck on the block.

I think that at the 87th Academy Awards on Sunday, Boyhood will be anointed 2014’s Best Picture, with Richard Linklater as Best Director.

I will be cheering for our own Eddie Redmayne as Best Actor, but I’ve a feeling that the statuette will go to Michael Keaton (for Birdman).

Julianne Moore (Still Alice) looks a cert for Best Actress.

In the Oscar fight: Ed Norton in Birdman

The Best Supporting gongs will probably be lifted by J. K. Simmons (Whiplash) and Patricia Arquette (Boyhood), though in the former category I can see Ed Norton (Birdman) springing a shock.

If it all does unfold as I predict, then it will be a disappointing evening, with such a strong British presence among the nominees.

But whatever happens, we can at least celebrate the memory of exactly half a century ago, when Rex Harrison received the Best Actor award for My Fair Lady (beating Peter O’Toole, Peter Sellers and Richard Burton), Cecil Beaton took Best Costume Design for the same film and Julie Andrews was Best Actress (for Mary Poppins).

What a night that was for Britain.