It’s widely felt that Jennifer Aniston was robbed of an Oscar nomination for her performance in this comedy-drama, which would have proved her prowess in serious roles; in fact, she showed her mettle as far back as 2002 in the pithy The Good Girl. In Cake, Aniston plays Claire, a Los Angeles resident who is separated from her husband, is haunted by a woman who recently killed herself (Anna Kendrick), and now suffers chronic back pain following a trauma that the film cleverly declines to spell out until an hour in. Self-medicating and prone to rebellious sarcasm, Claire is the despair of her protective Mexican cleaner, Silvana (Adriana Barraza, who has some of the best moments).
There’s some sharp writing from Patrick Tobin, and Aniston is both poignant and caustic, bringing a weary physicality that makes Claire more than a soft-centred wiseacre in search of that prized Hollywood panacea, closure. But Cake has a tendency to iron out the emotional kinks, and the visual execution smacks of suburban blandness, dampening the edge. You hope for the tang of lemon drizzle; what you ultimately get is Madeira, with the proverbial soggy bottom.
