Review: Cake

Ever experience a moment in life where the grief and loss of a loved one is just too much to bear?  When you become a person you don’t even recognize?  When you isolate friends and welcome strangers because they come with no judgement?

Claire Simmons is in pain.  Physical and mental anguish is her daily reality.  So much so, that she uses alcohol, pills and non-committal sex to erase the grief of losing her only child, her marriage, her looks and her personality.  Claire becomes someone who is brutally honest, yet deceptive…frumpy, miserable and sad.

Cake is like watching a train wreck that just won’t stop crashing.  It’s disturbing and emotionally compelling to watch Claire spiral out of control and yet you root for her to get her act together and live her life to the fullest in spite of it all.  You want her to hook back up with her husband and begin a new chapter without pain, judgement and group therapy.

It has been said that Jennifer Aniston is giving the “performance of her career” and I have to agree.  She allows herself to strip down, go there and just be…NO fancy clothes, no make-up and no contrived emotions.  Aniston even wore a body brace to make sure she could feel as uncomfortable as possible and restrict her movement as someone who is in chronic back pain  Immersing herself into Claire’s world of grief, hallucinations and realizations that someone always has it worse than you is done to perfection by Jennifer  Aniston in this film.

She’s a sure thing for an Oscar nod and I look forward to seeing how this film is received by the masses.  It’s an interesting experience for sure.  Cake made its splash debut at the Toronto Film Festival and is in limited release here in the US, so catch it while you can.