Robert Altman’s new film Cookie’s Fortune brings to mind a line from Arsenic and Old Lace: “Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.” Returning to one of his favorite settings, the contemporary South, Altman sets out the delightfully byzantine story of one quirky Mississippi matriarch’s death, and her aberrant family’s reaction, over the course of an Easter weekend.
Jewel Mae “Cookie” Orcutt (Patricia Neal) has never really recovered from the death of her beloved, and successful, husband Buck. Maintaining a running battle with household handyman and best friend Willis (Charles Dutton), in which they keep a lifelong tally of slights and offenses, real or perceived -- “Cookie 846, Willis 712” -- helps, but depression finally drives her to death by revolver. Unfortunately, Willis gets caught up in his errands collecting ingredients for Easter Sunday catfish enchiladas, leaving Cookie’s estranged niece Camille (Glen Close) to find the body. A pathological spinster with kneejerk aversion to the least hint of impropriety, she quickly enlists the help of her simpleminded sister Cora (Julianne Moore) in rearranging the crime scene -- “Nobody in this family commits suicide” -- to give the appearance of robbery and murder. When the imperturbable sheriff (Ned Beatty again) is finally called, he has no choice but to question his fishing buddy Willis -- whose only semblance of criminality is the habitual pilfering from his favorite watering hole of a bottle of Wild Turkey which he invariably replaces the next day -- since his fingerprints are all over the crime scene and the weapon. Plus, Camille ate the suicide note before returning to preparations for the holiday pageant she’s directing at First Presbyterian: “‘Salome’ -- by Oscar Wilde and Camille Orcutt.”
Coming quickly to Willis’s defense is the only clan member to stand unfailingly by Cookie in her dotage, Nora’s wayward daughter Emma (Liv Tyler), who turns herself in for a couple hundred dollars’ worth of unpaid parking tickets in order to keep him company...and to renew her frenzied dalliance with a deputy (Chris O’Donnell). Everything comes together, or comes apart, depending on how you look at it, just as John the Baptist is about to lose his head over the seventh veil.
Crafted by Anne Rapp, a former script supervisor (one of the smaller-print end credits) making her writing debut, Cookie’s Fortune risks getting getting carried away at times, with its bursts of exposition and combination Faulkner/Marx Brothers characters (also on hand are Lyle Lovett as a voyeuristic fishmonger, Courtney B. Vance as a charismatic homicide detective, and Donald Moffat as the whole town’s attorney). The film is more than redeemed, however, by Altman’s marvelous direction, and Dutton, who’s anchoring performance as the unflappable Willis conveys the comfortable security that everything will be okay. B+