''Cookie's Fortune'' is a 1999 American
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discus ...
film directed by
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New H ...
and starring
Glenn Close
Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress. Throughout her career spanning over four decades, Close has garnered numerous accolades, including two Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards ...
,
Julianne Moore
Julie Anne Smith (born December 3, 1960), known professionally as Julianne Moore, is an American actress. Prolific in film since the early 1990s, she is particularly known for her portrayals of emotionally troubled women in independent films, a ...
,
Liv Tyler
Liv Rundgren Tyler (born Liv Rundgren; July 1, 1977) is an American actress, producer, singer and former model. She began a modeling career at age 14. She later decided to focus on acting and made her film debut in ''Silent Fall'' (1994); she ...
,
Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal (born Patsy Louise Neal, January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) was an American actress of stage and screen. A major star of the 1950s and 1960s, she was the recipient of an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, and two ...
,
Charles S. Dutton
Charles Stanley Dutton (born January 30, 1951) is an American actor and director. He is best known for his roles in the television series ''Roc (TV series), Roc'' (1991–1994) and the television film ''The Piano Lesson (film), The Piano Lesson'' ...
, and
Chris O'Donnell
Christopher Eugene O'Donnell (born June 26, 1970) is an American actor and former model. He played Charlie Sims in '' Scent of a Woman'', Chris Reece in ''School Ties'', D'Artagnan in ''The Three Musketeers'', Jack Foley in the drama film '' C ...
. It follows a dysfunctional family in small-town
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
and their various responses to the suicide of their wealthy aunt, some of them turning criminal. Musicians
Lyle Lovett and
Ruby Wilson
Ruby Wilson (February 29, 1948 – August 12, 2016) was an American blues and gospel singer and actress. She was known as "The Queen of Beale Street" as she sang in clubs on Beale Street, Memphis, Tennessee, for over 40 years. She had a success ...
have minor supporting parts in the film.
Filming took place on location in
Holly Springs, Mississippi, where the film is set. It premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
in January 1999, and was entered into the
49th Berlin International Film Festival, held in February 1999.
Plot
Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt, an elderly
dowager
A dowager is a widow or widower who holds a title or property—a "dower"—derived from her or his deceased spouse. As an adjective, ''dowager'' usually appears in association with monarchy, monarchical and aristocracy, aristocratic Title#Aristocr ...
in
Holly Springs, Mississippi
Holly Springs is a city in, and the county seat of, Marshall County, Mississippi, United States, near the southern border of Tennessee. Near the Mississippi Delta, the area was developed by European Americans for cotton plantations and was dep ...
, lives alone in a large house and is helped out daily by Willis Richland, her
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
handyman and closest friend. After acting strangely, she commits
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
with one of her late husband Buck's pistols. Her pretentious niece, Camille, who directs local church theater productions, stops by later that day to borrow a glass fruit bowl, accompanied by her witless and submissive younger sister, Cora, with whom she lives. Camille finds Cookie's body in the bedroom and drops the bowl, shattering it and inadvertently cutting herself. Believing that "suicide is a disgrace", Camille eats Cookie's suicide note and attempts to stage her death to look like a robbery-murder. She removes a prized diamond and ruby necklace from Cookie's neck and throws the pistol in the garden (observed doing so by Ronnie, a young boy who lives next door). Camille coaches Cora to say that Cookie was murdered, and summons Sheriff Lester Boyle to the scene.
Meanwhile Cora's estranged and wayward daughter (and Cookie's grandniece), Emma, returns to town after having moved away following several supposed criminal offenses. Jason, an inept sheriff's deputy investigating Cookie's death, has long been romantically pursuing Emma. Willis is the primary suspect because his fingerprints appear on the gun she used to kill herself, but this is only because he had cleaned her guns the night before at her request. He is detained on suspicion of murder. The same night, Jason encounters Camille and Cora moving into Cookie's house, despite it being an active
crime scene
A crime scene is any location that may be associated with a committed crime. Crime scenes contain physical evidence that is pertinent to a criminal investigation. This evidence is collected by crime scene investigators (CSI) and law enforcement ...
, and calls backup to escort them off the property. Cora is shocked to find that Willis is the suspect, Emma openly protests it, and Camille feigns surprise.
Emma visits Willis at the police station, where Boyle and a local attorney, Jack Palmer—both fishing buddies of Willis's—casually play ''
Scrabble
''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...
'' with him in his unlocked cell. Willis tells an anecdote about Cookie's prized diamond and ruby necklace, explaining that Buck once had the necklace appraised only to discover its jewels were fake, a fact he never disclosed to Cookie. Otis Tucker, a detective from a larger jurisdiction, arrives that night and begins questioning locals. Protesting Willis's detainment, Emma refuses to leave the police station until he is freed. She and Jason also frequently sneak away to have sex in empty offices at the station.
The next day,
Easter Sunday
Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the ''Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...
, Emma arranges a holiday meal for Willis and herself in his cell. Meanwhile, Cora and Camille return to Cookie's home and begin cleaning her bloodied bedding and removing the crime scene tape, assuming they are to inherit the house. They are interrupted by Jack, who arrives to look for Cookie's will in a kitchen cookie jar, which Cora locates for him to Camille's frustration. At the station, Ronnie's father brings him in to recount seeing Camille throw the pistol in the garden; moreover, Camille's rare
AB negative
A blood type (also known as a blood group) is a classification of blood, based on the presence and absence of antibodies and inherited antigenic substances on the surface of red blood cells (RBCs). These antigens may be proteins, carbohydrate ...
blood is recovered from the crime scene, excluding Willis as a suspect.
That night, Camille and Cora prepare to debut their production of ''
Salome'' at the local church, in which Cora, Jason and Jack star. After police match the blood type to Camille, they descend upon the church as Cora is enticingly performing the play's
Dance of the Seven Veils sequence. Cora is left free of her sister's influence when Camille is arrested and taken to the station, where Willis is prepared to be freed. Jack arrives to disclose Cookie's will, which bequeaths her entire estate to Willis, who is Buck's nephew; this was never disclosed to Camille or Emma, who never suspected it because of Willis's race. Emma is delighted to learn that she and Willis are cousins, but shocked when medical records show that Camille, not Cora, is her biological mother, conceived from an affair she had with Cora's late husband when they all lived together. Cora had given a transfusion of blood to save Camille and afterward covered for Camille's illegitimate child.
Tucker interrogates Camille the following morning. She recounts how she staged Cookie's suicide to look like a murder for the sake of "family pride." Cora, who has ignored phone calls at her house, arrives at the station, and Camille expects she will corroborate her story, but Cora confidently insists that Cookie did not commit suicide, sticking resolutely to the story Camille concocted. Camille is charged with Cookie's murder. Half-delirious, she reenacts the Dance of the Seven Veils in her cell before throwing herself down on her bunk and sobbing in despair. Meanwhile, Willis and Emma go fishing with Boyle and Jack, before Emma excuses herself for another tryst with Jason.
Cast
Production
The screenplay is by
Anne Rapp
Anne Rapp is an American filmmaker, screenwriter and script supervisor. She has worked on more than 50 feature films since 1981 and collaborated with filmmaker Robert Altman during the last decade of his career.
Early life
Rapp was born in Texa ...
, and the film was produced by Willi Baer.
The film was shot on location in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Release
The film premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
in January 1999, and was entered into the
49th Berlin International Film Festival, held in February 1999.
Box office
''Cookie's Fortune'' was given a
limited theatrical release
__FORCETOC__
Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few theaters across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...
in the United States on April 2, 1999,
and grossed $186,828 during its opening weekend.
[ The release eventually expanded to 559 theaters, and remained in theaters for a total of 279 days, ultimately grossing $10.9 million.]
Critical response
, the film had 86% approval based on 58 reviews at the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
.
Kevin Thomas of the ''Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' praised the film as "a gem among the fabled director’s ensemble movies, a Southern charmer—full of good humor and mature wisdom—that views human foibles with the bemused compassion of a Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...
... t is a
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
beautiful, beguiling film." Desson Howe of ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' gave the film modest praise, writing: "By reducing his passion for actorly preciousness, Western Union symbolism and klutzy metaphor, Altman functions instead as a good manager of a decently written product. And he adheres sensibly to the filmmaking style that has served him for decades: introduce the actors to this moss-covered, indolent world, then leave them to sort things out in time for the ending. It's a simple formula but it works fine, even in the sleepiest of situations."
Soundtrack
The soundtrack is by David A. Stewart
David Allan Stewart (born 9 September 1952) is an English musician, songwriter and record producer, best known for Eurythmics, his successful professional partnership with Annie Lennox. Sometimes credited as David A. Stewart, he won Best British ...
. The soundtrack album was released on April 2, 1999. It features appearances by saxophonist Candy Dulfer.
# "Cookie"
# "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues"
# "Helios"
# "Camilla's Prayer"
# "The Cookie Jar"
# "Hey Josie"
# "All I'm Sayin' Is This"
# "A Good Man"
# "I Did Good Didn't I?"
# "A Golden Boat"
# "I'm Comin' Home"
# "Willis Is Innocent"
# "Patrol Car Blues"
# "Emma"
# "Humming Home"
All songs are by Stewart except "Cookie", "Camilla's Prayer" and "Patrol Car Blues", which are by Dulfer and Stewart.
See also
* 1999 in film
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...
* List of comedy films of the 1990s
* List of crime films of the 1990s
A list of crime films released in the 1990s.
* List of crime films of 1990
* List of crime films of 1991
*List of crime films of 1992
* List of crime films of 1993
* List of crime films of 1994
* List of crime films of 1995
* List of crime films ...
References
External links
*
*
*
*
visithollysprings.org
official website of Holly Springs, Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
{{Authority control
1999 films
1999 independent films
1990s crime comedy films
American black comedy films
American crime comedy films
1990s English-language films
Films about dysfunctional families
Films about inheritances
Films directed by Robert Altman
Films set in Mississippi
Films shot in Mississippi
Southern Gothic films
1999 comedy films
1990s American films