Post-Clueless, Alicia Silverstone‘s career has been a little… weird, to say the least. She’s hit the big screen only sporadically since, starring mainly in projects that sound good on the page but don’t really translate.
Vamps, for instance, had lots of potential — written and directed by Clueless‘ Amy Heckerling and starring Silverstone and Jessica Jones‘ Krysten Ritter as two modern-day vampires flouncing around New York. How did this not work? It still confounds me. Even Excess Baggage sounded kind of cool: Benicio Del Toro kidnaps Silverstone by accident and the two flounce around New York and fall in love. What a world! But for whatever reason, Silverstone’s never been able to reach the heights of her Clueless days; as such, she’s spent a lot of her time instead acting on stage, fighting for animal rights, and talking about being a vegan (and unfortunately being an anti-vaxxer).
Still, we’ve all stood by patiently, believing that one day, against all odds, Silverstone would make a silver-screen comeback, that she’d find a project worthy of her eccentric charm and ridiculously healthy hair (is that a vegan thing, or…?). This morning, a news item in Variety set off that Silverstone Sonar: Silverstone, Anne Heche, and Sandra Oh have just wrapped a dark comedy called Catfight.
Directed by Onur Tukel, Catfight follows “two bitter rivals who had been close in college,” played by Oh and Heche. Oh plays a “wealthy housewife,” while Heche plays a “struggling artist at a time when a U.S. president is hell-bent on starting a new war in the Middle East.” It’s unclear why these women hate each other, but maybe because one is wealthy and the other is poor, and class warfare is too real. But as Variety tells it, “when the women find themselves attending the same glitzy birthday party, verbal barbs lead to fisticuffs and an all-out brawl.”
It’s unclear whether Silverstone has a large role here — Variety only identifies her as “Heche’s love interest,” which could mean she’s either throwing down alongside Heche or just standing in the background, tossing her hair around. Regressive title aside (but, seriously, this title is stupid), Catfight sounds like it could really go either way for Silverstone and Co. According to The Wrap, the film isn’t just a series of scenes in which hot women beat the sh*t out of each other; it also “comments on male aggression, American apathy, class conflict, Islamophobia, maternal sacrifice and the absurdity of war.” Which is a lot for one movie! But admirable in its scope.
Troublingly, though, Tukel told The Wrap, “I’m not quite sure what we’ve got here but I’m excited! Every movie is an adventure, a risk, especially when you’re trying to do something different.” Which translates to: “I’m not sure how the f*ck to cut this movie together.” And not only is the film going to comment on literally every issue America is dealing with right now, but apparently, it’s also going to upend indie film culture entirely. “This is just what independent film culture needs right now,” added Tukel, “a swift punch in the gut to snap us out of this mumble-cored emo rut that we’re in.”
Okay! This may not be the Silverstone-aissance we’re looking for. But we’ll beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the Clueless past as we wait for Silverstone to make more discriminating career choices.