Death Becomes Her (1992)

	Also Known As: La Mort vous va si bien (french)
	Year of first release: 1992
	Director: Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future 1-3, Cast Away)
	Actors: Meryl Streep (The Deer Hunter, The Manchurian Candidate), Bruce Willis (Die Hard 1-6, The 6th Sense), Goldie Hawn, Isabella Rossellini
	Country: USA
	Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
	Conditions of visioning: 25.01.2018, VOD, 10" tablet screen.
Synopsis: Madeline Ashton (Streep) manages to win over the fiance (Willis) from her long-time rival Helen (Hawn). Years later things have turned sour and Madeline, stage actress, is ever looking for new ways to stay young.
Review: Released between Back to the Future Part III and Forrest Gump, Death Becomes Her is a quite forgotten movie in the career of Robert Zemeckis. I vaguely remembered watching it in my youth and wanted to have a fresher look at it. It is an odd movie, almost cartoonesque (may not come as a surprise from the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) with its two extremely jealous, competitive and rival characters, and a hilarious Bruce Willis stuck in the middle. Probably one of his best and unexpected roles. The story-telling is also different, with some large time gaps and roller-coaster life careers. And after the encounter with the mysterious Lisle (unforgettable Isabella Rossellini), the movie veers towards a slightly more Fantasy and horrific tone as one poster suggests (not so much the other one below this post). But this kind of 90's family horror like in The Addams Family or Beetlejuice. Even then, the movie never stops being a Comedy first and I enjoyed it as such all along. I love in particular the long dialog scenes, very theatrical, and the close-up shots on the main characters and their slightly over-done make up: Hawn's eyes or Willis' mustache. In fact I realized that there is a lot of talking in that movie and it does give it a kind of theater play feeling, but I didn't get bored by them once, probably thanks to the writing talent of Martin Donovan and David Koepp, the latter known for his work on Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Sam Raimi's Spider-man, Stir of Echoes and many other good movies. Death Becomes Her comes highly recommended, and I only regret not watching it with pristine sound and image quality on a decent home cinema.
Rating: 8 /10