To Die For

Van Sant's new film - the first not to be written by himself - is set in a typical American small-town. Suzanne Stone lives there, a newly-wed with one goal in life: to become a TV star. Her husband, Harry, is madly in love with her and adores everything she does. Suzanne is bored with her quiet family life, and succeeds in talking her way into a job at the local TV station. After starting work at the TV station, Suzanne decides to make a documentary about adolescence. She enlists the help of three teenagers with minimal future prospects, Timmy, Russel and Lydia. The result is a shattered small-town idyll, cul-minating in Larry's death. The film isn't a murder story, it's concerned more with what brought about the murder and it's consequences. Suzanne is a contemporary monster. She exploits everyone for her own gain. Her personality combines winning charm, seductiveness and honesty, but she is above all completely ruthless. Her goals are so crystal clear that she doesn't care about anything else. The teenager Jimmy, Suzanne's ally and admirer, is played by Joaquin Phoenix. He is incidentally the third Phoenix sibling to appear in a Van Sant film, after River and Rain. Though Jimmy and the other children appear as pawns to be mani-pulated by Suzanne, their characters are drawn with such sympathy and understanding that there is depth behind the satire. Van Sant uses a narrative style reminiscent of drama- documentary. A mixture of TV shows and interviews are in-cluded in this feature film. He toys with chronology: when is ''now''? Myths and preconceptions become real and reality becomes warped. The film opens in the middle of the story, and then pulls in both directions. The film's story is revealed at the outset, which could have caused problems, but doesn't. The theme for Van Sant's black comedy is the American obsession with celebrities and the famous. The film can be summed up by two well-known statements. The first is Warhol's prediction that everyone in the future will be famous for fifteen minutes. The second is a statement after Nixon's fall from grace ''American's don't believe anything unless it's on TV''. Suzanne asks in the film: ''What's the point of doing any-thing worthwhile if nobody's watching.'' MAD