The price of fame is murder -- or at least it is in the mind of one woman in New Hampshire. Suzanne Stone (
Nicole Kidman) has spent most of her life wanting to be famous; she's attractive, speaks well, and imagines herself to be intelligent ("imagines" is the key word here), so she has set her sights on becoming a TV anchorwoman. However, opportunities for female broadcasters are hard to come by in Little Hope, New Hampshire, and she's convinced that her husband, the once handsome but now flabby restaurant manager Larry Maretto (
Matt Dillon), is just getting in her way. Suzanne gets herself a spot hosting a weather report on a local public access station, and is preparing a documentary called "Teens Speak Out," which puts her in touch with a trio of high school students -- Jimmy (
Joaquin Phoenix), Russell (
Casey Affleck), and Lydia (
Alison Folland) -- who are even more desperate for attention than she is. When Suzanne hatches a plot to get Larry out of her life once and for all, she uses Jimmy, who has developed a serious crush on her, to do her dirty work, but Larry's sister Janice (
Illeana Douglas), who has long believed there was something fishy about Suzanne, eventually begins to realize what happened to her brother.
Nicole Kidman won a Golden Globe award for her work in this film, which represented something of a comeback for director
Gus Van Sant after the commercial and critical disaster of
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Screenwriter
Buck Henry plays a small role as a high school teacher. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide