Cookie's Fortune

A small town in Mississippi at Easter. Old Cookie has lived alone since her husband died, and one day she kills herself. Her niece Camille finds the body first and, thinking a suicide would shame the family, rearranges the scene to look like a burglary. As a result the police arrest Willis, the man closest to Cookie. Everyone in town knows Willis would not have done it, and the evidence is there. Robert Altman directs. The cast includes Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Charles S. Dutton, Patricia Neal, Chris O'Donnell and Ned Beatty. The tone is not that of a murder thriller. Nobody is tense, the police treat Willis with courtesy and play poker with him in the cell; Altman deliberately removes the suspense and puts a portrait of the town in its place. Camille is staging Salome at the church, and that line is the satire: a woman rearranging the truth in the name of art and respectability. Race sits quietly under the narrative. Willis is black, Cookie was white, and they were together for years; how the town sees it is shown without ever being explained. Altman's known method is here too: a large cast, overlapping talk, and atmosphere rather than plot. Who it is for: viewers who like Robert Altman and black comedy set in the American south. Who it is not for: there is no tension, the pace is very loose, and the narrative is in no hurry to get anywhere.