Cake

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Daniel Barnz/Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Anna Kendrick, Sam Worthington, Mamie Gummer, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy

It's easy to understand why many film-goers and critics felt Jennifer Aniston was cheated out of an Oscar nomination for her performance in director Daniel Barnz's Cake. Her role is a refreshing departure from the junk in which she is usually cast and she ensures the opportunity isn't wasted.

Whether the rest of the film holds up to Aniston's ambitious performance is for every moviegoer to decide. For me, it was a stimulating experience if not a riveting one. The film begins well and sustains its darkly comic tone before stumbling a bit in the third act.

Aniston plays Claire Bennett, a lawyer who has taken leave from her profession to recover from a horrific accident that left her son dead and her face and body with a disturbing array of surgical scars. When we first see her, she is in group therapy for pain management and judging from her peevishness, the meeting holds little therapeutic value to her. Conducting the session is Annette (Felicity Huffman, in a marginal, caricatured role), who has asked everyone to address a photograph of a former group member named Nina Collins (Anna Kendrick), who has recently committed suicide and left the group with more emotional pain to shoulder. When Annette asks that each member tell Nina how her suicide has affected them, Claire's sarcastic response eventually leads to her dismissal from the therapy group.

Though Claire makes a mockery of the therapy session, she is haunted by the death of her fellow support group member and friend.

When not in therapy, Claire spends her days in agonizing pain, which necessitates the use of copious pharmaceuticals; some which she hides from the prying eyes of her housekeeper/assistant; Silvana (Adriana Barraza). As Claire suffers from her injury and the loss of her son, she becomes mildly obsessed with Nina's death; going so far as to visit the precise location of her friend's suicide; which occurred on an L.A. overpass.

Jennifer Aniston shows a surprising aptitude for playing a darker character than she is accustomed. And to give such a character credibility, she suppresses her movie-star comeliness; her signature, silky locks are denied their glamorous luster and her face bears scant make-up.

As Claire's nightmares of Nina occur with disturbing frequency, she decides to visit her friend's former home by pretending to be a former occupant. Nina's husband Roy (Sam Worthington) sees through the deception but allows Claire to roam the house anyway. He confronts her afterward and though he seems a little perturbed by her ruse, he offers her a friendly handshake. In the coming days, a friendly, sympathetic bond forms between them.

Whether Claire will ever fully recover from the accident becomes a plot point, as her medication provides only temporary relief and her physical therapy sessions prove to be little more than exercises in hostility, which she venomously directs at her therapist.

Other obstacles to her mental and physical recovery present themselves: Claire's contentious relationship with her former husband and a visit from the man responsible for her accident (William H. Macy), who shows up at her door one day, full of contrition and guilt. Claire's violent response to his presence is one of the more poignant moments in the film.

Barnz keeps the story from wallowing in too much darkness and Claire from becoming a tedious, insufferable victim. A glimmer of hope arrives late in the film to alleviate the gloom but the story resists a neat, life-affirming resolution.

One of the film's flaws is providing the audience plausible motivation for Claire making Nina the object of so much guilt and grief, though her own existential crises might adequately serve as motivation enough. Another flaw is the film's ill-advised turn in the third act when Claire comes into contact with a runaway--an unconvincing plot grafting that does little for the narrative.

Aniston's performance is terrific. One can only hope she builds on this career opportunity rather than doing more time in dreary, witless comedies. Other than Silvana (deftly played by Adriana Barraza), other characters are more broadly drawn. Some actors' roles, like Macy's, are only cameos. I wish the screenwriter had given Sam Worthington's Roy more substance; he clearly lacks Claire's psychological layers.

Nevertheless, Aniston's performance is reason enough to see the film. If I could, I would gladly give her Felicity Jones' undeserving Oscar nomination for The Theory of Everything. But make no mistake, this is a performance film rather than a well-rounded drama.

I don't know that I'll remember the film for being something other than Aniston's breakthrough role, which is too bad. If the story runs out of gas, it still manages to engage. That's more than I can say for most Jennifer Aniston films. Let's hope this marks some kind of turning point in her career.