[REVIEW] Cake

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Like the protagonist Claire, I spent the majority of Cake teetering on the edge. I wanted desperately for it to be an anthem for mental health, but couldn’t shake the feeling that it fell short. While it carries the spunk and soul of a hardy film, it ultimately lacked execution, a flaw that proved to be fatal, knocking Cake from among the ranks of other recent releases like Whiplash and down to second tier.

Jennifer Aniston plays Claire Bennett, a woman whose traumatic past left her with chronic pain, an incapacitating neural condition. In doing so, Cake marks one of Aniston’s most notable steps outside of her characteristic “Rachel Green” mould, yet she does it so seamlessly that you wouldn’t know any better. Aniston transcends words, needing only a turn of the mouth to communicate pain or a raised eyebrow and piercing stare to say, “you heard me.”

To Claire, other people are punching bags, and she has every reason to be swinging. Every morning she wakes up to scars on her face that remind her of what she lost and the emptiness of what she used to have in her bones. There were scenes that were, at times, unbearable to watch. For a while, you wonder if Claire is defined by anything other than her chronic pain. Anyone with half a heart will grimace as her static days bleed into one another for what you fear may be the rest of her eternity, marked only by moments where she struggles to pick clothes off the ground or get into bed.

Throughout the movie, Claire grasps on her will to live even as she is haunted by images of bridges, pools and the ease of just slipping away. Every one of her actions is driven by her need to feel something other than pain, every brash comment a cry for help and every pill popped a settlement for numbness instead. That said, our anti-heroine is loathe to back down without a fight, and she puts up a great one.

Claire’s best asset is arguably Silvana, played by Adriana Barraza, who is her best friend before she is her housekeeper. Much like a fairy godmother, Silvana waves wand after wand to attend to Claire’s absurd requests. Spunky and full of all the life Claire seems to lack, Silvana is the comforting face to both Claire and viewer alike. Cake challenges what it means to really know someone, insinuating that perhaps it is the most unlikely of relationships from which we draw the most comfort.

For all its seriousness, Cake is equally stomach-turning as it is darkly humorous. Throughout the movie, Claire flirts with various suitors, and when that gets old, the law. There are enough illegal drug smuggles and house break-ins to satisfy any delinquent’s heart. After all, Aniston is not Aniston without humour, and even Cake has plenty of that.

While Jennifer Aniston and Adriana Barraza filled the shoes of their roles, the rest of the cast was underdeveloped and flat. The motivations behind some actions were not always clear, or even vaguely accessible, which meant they seemed unnecessary. There were even some scenes that could have been cut out to no detriment to the final product.

It takes the whole movie to get there, but the last five minutes are executed to a tee. It is disappointing to see a movie like Cake flounder through the beginning, pick up a little in the middle and only reach its full potential at the very end. It makes you question where the movie could have gone, had it been in different hands.

Opinions about execution aside, Cake is exactly the type of movie that the world has been waiting for. A grounded foray into mental health and chronic illness, it doesn’t shy away from portraying a difficult subject in its honesty, even at the expense of becoming too heavy. We are all teetering on an edge, some more than others, some at different points in our lives. The rest is just a balancing act, and in this domain, Cake excels.

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