Cookie's Fortune

USA 1998

Reviewed by Geoffrey Macnab

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Jewel Mae 'Cookie' Orcutt is an elderly woman who lives alone in a Deep South mansion house, pining for Buck, her dead husband. Her only friend is Willis, a middle-aged black man who does odd jobs around the house. She is at loggerheads with her two nieces, Camille Dixon and Cora Duvall, who are scandalised by her unconventional behaviour. Cookie's favourite relative Emma (Cora's daughter) is back in town and working for the local catfish supplier. Willis tracks her down and tells her that Cookie would like to see her. Desperate to be reunited with Buck, Cookie shoots herself. Not long after her death, Camille and Cora arrive at the house fresh from rehearsal of the Easter pageant, a reworking of Oscar Wilde's Salomé. When Camille discovers Cookie's body, to avoid a scandal she eats the suicide note and tampers with the evidence so it looks as if her aunt has been murdered.

Willis is arrested and charged with the killing. He is put in the local jail (where he is joined by Emma) while the police mount an investigation. Eventually, blood marks are discovered which incriminate Camille, who cut her finger on the site of the crime. Camille is arrested. To everybody's amazement, Cookie's will names Willis as her closest living relative. Cora, the only one who can establish Camille's innocence, sticks to the 'murder' story. Emma learns that Camille, not Cora, is her mother. Camille goes to prison where she has a mental breakdown. Willis is released.

Review

Cookie's Fortune, Altman's second film on the trot to be set in the Deep South, is in a far more relaxed groove than its predecessor The Gingerbread Man. It takes the widow Cookie an eternity to walk up and down the staircase of her southern mansion and Altman is determined to show every last step. Likewise, her companion Willis may be falsely accused of her murder, but that doesn't mean he is going to move in anything other than his usual shuffling gait. Altman and his actors take their tempo from the slow, mournful blues which fills the soundtrack, and it's only when Ruby Wilson belts out the opening song that the pace picks up.

One character who isn't in the slightest laid-back is Camille, the arch conspirator and busybody who directs the townsfolk in a truly atrocious Easter-pageant production of Salomé. Camille's cast declaim their lines with a dreary solemnity while Camille's sister Cora hoofs her way through her own clumsy version of the Dance of the Seven Veils. There is something perverse about watching highly accomplished actors pretending to be bungling amateurs, but Camille's directorial approach doesn't seem markedly different from that of Altman himself. She shares his morbidity ("that needs more blood around the neck," she complains about the severed head of John the Baptist) and, like Altman, she seems to enjoy working with a large ensemble cast. If her production of Salomé is mannered and a little absurd, so too is Cookie's Fortune.

Anne Rapp's screenplay tries - not entirely successfully - to undercut its own prevailing mood of whimsy by hinting at the dark events which cloud the protagonists' lives. This is a tale about a dysfunctional family which could easily have slipped over into Flannery O'Connor-style Southern Gothic. Most of the menfolk seem to be absent - either dead or fled - and those who remain are either vaguely sinister, like Lyle Lovett's voyeuristic catfish supplier, or downright goofy, like the sheriff's infatuated deputy.

But Rapp can't resist poking gentle fun at the foibles of the small-town folk: Cookie smokes a pipe; Willis is obsessed with fishing. The mood is closer to that of Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone than to the pessimism of Raymond Carver (whose stories Altman adapted with such skill and perception in Short Cuts). Mild eccentricity reigns. "She's a kinder soul, and has a rare ability to find in these characters an authentic, truthful quirkiness," the director has observed of Rapp. In trying to be faithful to her screenplay, he risks acting against his own nature: woolly-minded benevolence is not what you expect from the soured old magus. Just as Camille has a neat way of sweeping anything disagreeable under the carpet, Altman chooses not to make too much of an issue out of Camille's racism or Cookie's suicide - the latter's death turns out to be little more than the macguffin that sets the plot rolling.

Still, there are neat touches. Altman makes the most of the creaky gun cupboard door which never stays closed, and marks Cookie's death in mordantly funny fashion with an explosion of feathers. (She shoots herself through a pillow.) Liv Tyler, as the coltish, long-limbed, dulcet-toned Emma, and Charles Dutton as Willis have an easy comic rapport. Their scenes together yield the film's warmest and most likable moments. Unlike The Gingerbread Man, which could have been directed by anybody, Cookie's Fortune does bear Altman's imprimatur. The old energy and bite may be lacking, but at least this lazy, amiable shaggy-dog story was made in the same freewheeling, idiosyncratic way as Altman's best work.

Credits

Producers
Robert Altman
Etchie Stroh
Screenplay
Anne Rapp
Director of Photography
Toyomichi Kurita
Editor
Abraham Lim
Production Designer
Stephen Altman
Music
David A. Stewart
©Kudzu Productions, Inc
Production Companies
October Films presents
a Sandcastle 5 and Elysian Dreams production
Executive Producer
Willi Baer
Co-producers
David Levy
James McLindon
Production Co-ordinator
Robin Mulcahy
Unit Production Manager
Barbara A. Hall
Location Manager
Gregory H. Alpert
2nd Unit Director
Stephen Altman
Assistant Directors
Tommy Thompson
David Ascher
Script Supervisor
Lexie Longstreet
Casting
Pam Dixon Mickelson
Associate:
Barbara Allen
2nd Unit Director of Photography
Robert Reed Altman
Camera Operator
Robert Reed Altman
Art Director
Richard Johnson
Set Director
Susan J. Emshwiller
Costumes
Dona Granata
Costume Supervisor
Susan Kaufmann
Make-up
Key Artist:
Manlio Rocchetti
Artist:
Linda Melazzo
Key Hair
Martial Corneville
Wig Design
Aldo Signoretti
Main Title Design
Patty Ryan
Titles/Opticals
CFI: The Imaging Group
Musicians
Guitars:
David A. Stewart
The Edge
Double Bass:
Chucho Merchán
Music Producer
Stephen McLaughlin
Music Editor
Helena Lea
Programming
Reece Gilmour
Harmonium
Patrick Seymour
Engineer at Chapel
Lee Manning
Salomé Staging
Frank Chapin
Salomé Choreography
Jennifer M. Mizenko
Sound Mixer
Mark Weingarten
Re-recording Mixers
John Ross
Joe Barnett
Supervising Sound Editor
Frederick Howard
Dialogue Editors
David Grant
Michael Hertlein
Robert C. Jackson
Sound Effects Editors
Javier Bennassar
Michael Mullane
Roland Thai
ADR
Supervisor:
Thomas Jones
Mixer:
Alan Freedman
Foley
Artists:
Ossama Khuluki
S. Diane Marshall
Mixers:
Mary Erstad
C.W. Jones
Editors:
Craig Jurkiewicz
Lucy Sustar
Cast
Glenn Close
Camille Dixon
Julianne Moore
Cora Duvall
Liv Tyler
Emma Duvall
Chris O'Donnell
Jason Brown
Charles S. Dutton
Willis Richland
Patricia Neal
Jewel Mae 'Cookie' Orcutt
Ned Beatty
Lester Boyle
Courtney B. Vance
Otis Tucker
Donald Moffat
Jack Palmer
Lyle Lovett
Manny Hood
Danny Darst
Billy Cox
Matt Malloy
Eddie 'The Expert' Pitts
Niecy Nash
Wanda Carter
Randle Mell
Patrick Freeman
Rufus Thomas
Theo Johnson
Ruby Wilson
Josie Martin
Preston Strobel
Ronnie Freeman
Ann Whitfield
Mrs Henderson/Herodias
Hank Worsham
Tigellinus
Kenny Pillow
Derek Guyer
soldiers
Emily Sindelar
Marlene
Heath Lail
prop boy
Shari Schneider
Mrs Tippit
John Sullivan
Mr Tippit
Red West
Mr Henderson
Ferguson Reid
Chris Coulson
deputies
Cheryl Cole
picnic lady
Fred Sanders
guitarist
Jimmy Ellis
drummer
Solomon McDaniel
keyboardist
Terris Tate
bass guitarist
Certificate
12
Distributor
Alliance Releasing (UK)
10,601 feet
117 minutes 47 seconds
Dolby digital
Colour by
CFI Color
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011