Roger Ebert once observed on Robert Altman: “There may not have been a director who liked actors more.” Altman’s 1999 film “Cookie’s Fortune” exemplifies that, and it is often fun to watch how its main cast members willingly embody the human eccentricities of their colorful characters. Every moment in the film clearly shows that Altman really enjoyed spending time with his cast members, and the result is a little but precious gem full of charm, humor, and that distinctive Southern atmosphere.
The movie is set in a small rural town of Mississippi during one Easter week. As this town is going through another night, everything seems quiet and peaceful, except the busy rehearsal of an amateur theater production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome at a local church. In fact, the policemen patrolling around the town are more occupied with their fishing matters than doing their routine job.
And then we meet Willis Richard (Charles S. Dutton), a Black handyman working for a wealthy widow named Jewel Mae “Cookie” Orcutt (Patricia Neal). Having lived with his employee for many years, he has been pretty much like her best friend, and we can clearly sense the mutual affection between them when he returns from a local bar. He clumsily attempts to go inside the house without waking up Cookie, but he only ends up waking her instead. Nonetheless, they have some hearty night talk while he cleans up her dead husband’s guns, as he promised before.
However, on the very next day, Cookie decides to join her dead husband just because, well, she is reminded again that she has missed him so much. While Willis is outside for several other things besides buying some groceries, she commits suicide in her bedroom. Her dead body is soon found by her two nieces, Camille (Glenn Close) and Cora (Julianne Moore), who drop by Cookie’s house just to borrow a certain precious glass object, even though they have never been that close to their aunt. As a haughty lady neurotically fastidious about her family reputation, Camille instantly decides to do some cover-up. Cora does not object to this as a dowdy woman who her overbearing sister has always dominated.
Thanks to Camille, Willis later becomes the prime suspect in this “murder” case, but the movie does not hurry itself as it leisurely doles out one absurd moment after another. Yes, the situation is indeed serious for Willis and several others who care about him. However, Willis is rather phlegmatic about his circumstances. There is an amusing moment when he casually plays Scrabble with not only his lawyer (He is the only lawyer in the town, by the way) but also one of the deputy sheriffs inside the jail of the police station (“I’ve fished with him,” he says as guaranteeing Willis’ innocence).
And this is just the beginning of many small, humorous moments to follow. Quite confident that she will inherit everything from her aunt as her closest kin, Camille quickly embarks on taking over her aunt’s house. She is not deterred at all, even after getting the sheriff’s warning, and her brief moment involving a cookie jar is simply priceless, to say the least. While promptly siding with Willis, Camille’s estranged daughter Emma (Liv Tyler) also cannot help but get drawn more to her ex-boyfriend, who is now working as a deputy sheriff, and their constant mutual attraction functions as a sort of running gag throughout the film. In case of an unflappable investigator entering the picture later in the story, he often finds himself getting baffled a lot during his interrogations of several eccentric town residents who supposedly saw Willis around the time of the “murder”. We are all the more amused as he seems oblivious to how two certain Black ladies flirt with him in the middle of one of his interrogations.
Even when everything in the story is about to be resolved as expected, the movie continues to take its time as before. Before eventually heading to its finale, where a few hidden personal facts are revealed to our little surprise, the movie lingers a bit on Camille’s hilariously painstaking efforts on that amateur theater production of Salome. Altman’s affection toward his performers is apparent here, as he patiently pays attention to the small and big details of that modest stage performance.
Like many of Altman’s works, the film’s main cast members give a solid ensemble performance, bringing life and spirit to their respective parts. Although being a bit too exaggerated at times, Glenn Close delightfully chews every theatrical moment of hers as demanded, and she is complemented well by the relatively subdued appearance of Julianne Moore. While Liv Tyler and Chris O’Donnell generate enough romantic chemistry between them, Ned Beatty, Donald Moffat, Lyle Lovett, Courtney B. Vance, and Patricia Neal are colorful in their way, and the special mention goes to Charles S. Dutton, whose amiable performance effortlessly holds the center around his fellow cast members.
In his review for “A Fish Called Wanda,” Ebert said that he enjoyed comedies “where eccentric people behave in obsessive and eccentric ways and other, equally eccentric, people do everything they can to offend and upset the first batch.” “Cookie’s Fortune” is surely a prime example, and this small but likable comedy film is too good to be merely forgotten as one of Altman’s several minor works between “Short Cuts” (1993) and “Gosford Park” (2001). Although it does not reach the greatness of these two high points in Altman’s filmmaking career, it is still quite entertaining to observe Altman simply having a little fun with his talented performers, savoring their cheerful Southern comfort.
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