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.

18858048.jpg-r_640_600-b_1_D6D6D6-f_jpg-q_x-xxyxx
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.

FriendswithMoney
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.

Jen-in-Friends-With-Money-jennifer-aniston-601033_1500_1002
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: 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.

Aniston of the Week: Dream for an Insomniac

Posted on by harrietwarman

For the second edition of Aniston of the Week, we look back to the early days of Jennifer’s career – not the TV years when she appeared as Jeannie in the Ferris Bueller series – but those days after Friends started but before she became a regular in romantic comedies. Jennifer’s first movie was The Leprechaun (Mark Jones, 1993) but we’ll get to that later, instead we’ll explore a movie in which Jennifer plays the role of ‘the best friend’ – a role that would later be typical of actors such as Judy Greer to Aniston’s star turn.

740d460ad09926296c4341d5879b1ea0
Aniston as Allison

FILM: Dream for an Insomniac
DIRECTOR: Tiffanie DeBartolo
YEAR: 1996
CHARACTER NAME AND PROFESSION: Allison, aspiring actor.
PLOT SUMMARY: Set in San Francisco, Frankie (Ione Skye) is an orphaned, insomniac, romantic idealist who lives above her uncle Leo’s (Seymour Cassel) café – Café Blue Eyes, where she works occasionally with her cousin Rob (Michael Landes). She and her best friend Allison (Aniston) are due to depart for LA in three days so they can pursue their acting ambitions. Cynical Frankie doesn’t think her ideal man exists because her mother told her not to settle for anything less than the blue eyes (hence the café name) of Frank Sinatra. Lo and behold, in walks David (Mackenzie Astin) one day, a blue-eyed writer looking for a job. Frankie falls for him, but surprise! He has a girlfriend.
CHARACTER TRAITS: Ambitious, nurturing, witty, generous – your basic Best. Friend. Ever.

Aniston as Allison, giving advice like a best friend should.
Aniston as Allison, giving advice like a best friend should.

NOTES ON PERFORMANCE: Aniston had been playing Rachel Green in Friends for two years at this point, and it’s apparent that Allison owes a lot to the Rachel persona, as some of the same mannerisms – hand gestures, expressions etc. – are present, alongside of course THE HAIR. Nevertheless, Aniston basically underplays the role, letting Skye remain the heart of the film. She also gamely adds in this habit of Allison’s to try out different accents in almost every scene (she’s French when introduced) because, y’know, she’s an actor! Her southern drawl is probably the most convincing, but watch out for a scene toward the end in which she’s supposed to be Indian (I think), which is, as you can imagine, just plain wrong.

l-r Sean Blackman, Jennifer Aniston, Ione Skye, Mackenzie Astin
l-r Sean Blackman, Jennifer Aniston, Ione Skye, Mackenzie Astin

NOTES ON FILM: Dream for an Insomniac is shot in black and white for the film’s first 20 minutes and bursts into colour the the moment blue-eyed David shows up, which is but one of the many ways the film references classic Hollywood, and of course Sinatra et al. Pop-cultural references abound elsewhere too, with one scene in which the characters discuss the ‘God’ status of Bono versus Michael Stipe. Like Reality Bites (Ben Stiller, 1994) and Singles (Cameron Crowe, 1992), it’s your essential Gen-X set-up, but unlike those films, Dream for an Insomniac doesn’t convince in its characterisation or setting.

CONCLUSION: Aniston provides effortless charm in a film that tries too hard to be charming.