Aniston of the week: Friends with Money

Posted on by harrietwarman

After the horror of last weeks’ Horrible Bosses, rather than dive right back into that misogynistic pit for the sequel, we look back to one of those ‘serious’ roles where Aniston shows that less is more. Aniston is also in very good company, among a solid cast who all underplay in order to hold up the film’s weighty, worthy theme.

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Aniston as Olivia

FILM: Friends with Money
DIRECTOR: Nicole Holofcener
YEAR: 2006
CHARACTER NAME AND PROFESSION: Olivia, Maid/Housekeeper
PLOT SUMMARY: Three couples are friends with Olivia, they are all wealthy, she is not. Christine (Catherine Keener) and David (Jason Isaacs) are screenwriters who work together, have one son and are having an extension built on the top of their house that will allow them to see the ocean. Franny (Joan Cusack) is a full time mother (with full time help), married to Matt (Greg Germann) who is a doctor (I think). Jane (Frances McDormand) is a fashion designer married to Aaron (Simon McBurney), who owns an organic ‘LUSH’ type cleansing product company, they have one son. Olivia (Aniston) used to teach at a very fancy private prep school, but she left because it was ‘unbearable’ – the children teased her because they perceived her as poor. She now works as a housekeeper/maid and Franny, in particular wants to fix her. She starts dating Franny’s trainer Matt (Scott Caan) who treats her very badly.

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L-R: Joan Cusack as Franny, Catherine Keener as Christine, Jennifer Aniston as Olivia, Frances McDormand as Jane.

CHARACTER TRAITS: Low self-esteem, kind, depressed, thoughtful.
NOTES ON PERFORMANCE: Aniston really holds back here and is very convincing. Olivia is the kind of person with enough self-worth to remove herself from a bad work situation (the fancy school), but not enough to stop pining for her married ex-lover, or be defiant against the awful Mike, who insists on splitting her earnings when he accompanies her to jobs, despite sleeping with her and cleaning a couple of shelves. Aniston moves through each scene as though not actually present, and it’s only really when she’s calling her ex that we see a spark of energy. It works, because the film is leading to a set-up that requires us to believe she’ll start a relationship with someone who has ‘people problems’ just like her.

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Ain’t no snooty store clerk gonna deny Christine her sample!

NOTES ON FILM: Writer/Director Holofcener (Enough Said, 2013) here is pretty broad in her judgement of the wealthy versus the poor, with Franny wondering aloud whether she’d be friends with Olivia if they met now – we’ve been wondering the same thing. They’re all oblivious and Olivia’s acceptance of them is explained by her passiveness generally. There are some nice details here, such as Olivia’s gathering of sample creams, which demonstrate that she’s still aiming thriftily at the luxury she used to enjoy unimpeded. Her last act union with Marty (Bob Stephenson) isn’t wholly convincing, due to their lack of chemistry, but it’s almost believable that these two people’s combined issues would lead them to each other. It’s also worth noting that Frances McDormand is excellent, as ever.
CONCLUSION: A low-key, commendably reserved performance in a half-interesting film.

 

Aniston of the Week: Horrible Bosses

Posted on by harrietwarman

This week, a ‘comedy’ in which Aniston plays against type, demonstrates the ignorance and insensitivity of mainstream Hollywood. It’s hard to enjoy her obvious comic skill when it’s presented in such a problematic way. Nevertheless, C.I endures, and watches anyway.

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Aniston as Dr Julia Harris

FILM: Horrible Bosses
DIRECTOR: Seth Gordon
YEAR: 2011
CHARACTER NAME AND PROFESSION: Dr Julia Harris, Doctor of Dental Surgery.
PLOT SUMMARY: Three men who hate their bosses but for various reason cannot quit their jobs, decide to murder them instead. Nick (Jason Bateman) works for Dave Harken, who insists he works all hours of the day for a promotion that doesn’t exist and makes it impossible for him to get another job. Kurt works for Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell), a coke addict, who uses his office as a sex den, seemingly. Aniston plays the boss of Dale (Charlie Day) whom she sexually harasses and blackmails.
CHARACTER TRAITS: Irresponsible, unethical, inappropriate, rapist (she undresses and puts Dale, and other patients in sexual positions whilst they’re unconscious, she grabs his penis against his will). The film labels her as a ‘Crazy Bitch.’

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Aniston with Charlie Day as Dale

NOTES ON PERFORMANCE: Aniston was celebrated for her portrayal of Julia, as it appeared she was playing against the ‘girl-next-door’ image she’d become known for. While it’s true that Aniston utterly convinces as the cruel, manipulative character she portrays, she’s also very much exploited for her attractiveness, which is a deeply problematic treatment of someone who harasses and violates her junior at work.
NOTES ON FILM: By all counts, Horrible Bosses is a truly terrible film. Three white men solicit advice from a black man to give them advice about how to kill their bosses. There are numerous gay jokes and rape jokes. Aniston’s entire character is demonstrable of how Hollywood enforces the notion that female on male rape is somehow a joke/a good thing/impossible. She’s made the object of a male gaze, and it’s constantly suggested that Dale should be grateful for the attention he’s getting from her because she’s so ‘hot’.

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L-R Jamie Foxx as Dean ‘Muthafucka’ Jones, Charlie Day as Dale, Jason Sudeikis as Kurt and Jason Bateman as Nick

Furthermore, though Dale confronts her, asking to work in a ‘rape free’ environment, it’s not the sexual harassment that’s presented as a problem for him, it’s the threat that Julia makes to tell his fiancée that they’ve slept together. The screenplay attempts to extracts laughs from a scenario in which a man is made to feels he’s unable to confide in his fiancée something that negatively affects his daily life. That’s not funny, it’s a tragedy. Finally, Aniston’s character is the only female to have any significant screen time – the rest are either naïve, unfaithful or exploited for a fat joke.

CONCLUSION: Apparently another rape scene was deleted from Horrible Bosses 2. Can’t wait to see what they left in.

Aniston of the week: The Object of My Affection

Posted on by harrietwarman

In week three of Aniston of the Week, we look at another Friends era film. In 2000, the Madonna vehicle, The Next Best Thing (John Slesinger) would present the straight woman and gay man raising a chid scenario, with mainly terrible results, but two years prior, Jennifer Aniston starred alongside Paul Rudd in a superior film on the same subject, directed by The Lady in the Van’s Nicholas Hytner.

Aniston as Nina
Aniston as Nina

FILM: The Object of My Affection
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Hytner                        
YEAR: 1998
CHARACTER NAME AND PROFESSION: Nina Borowski, Social Worker
PLOT SUMMARY: Nina (Aniston), a Brooklyn based Social Worker and George (Rudd) a private school primary teacher meet at the former’s step sister Contance’s (Allison Janney) house after the latter’s success directing the school play. The two become friends and move in together when George’s boyfriend breaks up with him unexpectedly. When Nina falls pregnant by her outspoken boyfriend Vince (John Pankow), she decides she would rather raise the child with George, which causes tension between them, not least of all because her feelings for George are not purely platonic.
CHARACTER TRAITS: Super, super kind, thoughtful, nurturing, intelligent, optimistic but with low self-esteem.
The-Object-of-My-Affection-jennifer-aniston-665561_500_282NOTES ON PERFORMANCE: This was perhaps the first film role in which Aniston could be seen in unglamorous mode, as Nina is a low-paid, socially conscious, ‘average’ person. As a result, Aniston is fairly subdued, convincing as someone who would spend their time with Vince, rather than find someone less egregious. She’s restrained and deeply sympathetic during scenes when she bares her heart to George, ultimately giving a very strong, relatable performance.

7142_16_8_1600x900_0NOTES ON FILM: The Object of My Affection, despite the convincing leads, seems to exist in a pretty idealised world. Nina’s community centre is portrayed as the kind of place where sexual health advice given to insecure teens is all that’s required, and the stereotype of the overweight outspoken downstairs neighbour in George and Nina’s building is enough to convince us that they live somewhere ‘real’. A certain awareness of this unreality is indicated by the references to Hollywood musicals, as George and Nina are compared to Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in Singin’ in the Rain in a scene at their lovely community dance class. Everyone in the film seems to believe in the film and gives spirited performances, especially Rudd, and Nigel Hawthorne as the elder professor also experiencing unrequited love. All this contrives to elicit warm fuzzy feelings about the cast and overlook the super sappy happy ending, in which an interracial couple, a gay man, his boyfriend and the biological father all form the core of one sweet little girl called Molly’s family. Hooray!

CONCLUSION: Aniston is adorable.