Tone of ‘The Cake Eaters’ doesn’t resonate all the way through

Published 8:06 pm Thursday, March 26, 2009

Once upon a time Mary Stuart Masterson seemed poised to be the next big thing. Her successes in the late ’80s and early ’90s, in movies such as “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Fried Green Tomatoes,” gave evidence of a likable presence who also had serious acting chops.

Why that career never quite peaked is not clear, but it comes as no surprise somehow that Masterson has directed a film: “The Cake Eaters,” a broody little number geared toward actors.

The movie is a study of small-town dreams and frustrations — perhaps no coincidence, given that Masterson is related to the late Horton Foote, the Oscar-winning writer who died earlier this month, and whose specialty was the delicate emotional world of Middle America.

“The Cake Eaters” is written by Jayce Bartok, an actor who plays one of the main roles. It mostly browses across the lives of a couple of families.

After the death of his mother, 20-year-old Beagle (Aaron Stanford) lives with his dad (Bruce Dern), their newly quiet lives interrupted by the arrival of Beagle’s brother (author Bartok). The sib missed the funeral, and resentments remain.

Beagle gets to know a teenager, Georgia (Kristen Stewart), who suffers from Friedreich’s ataxia, an inherited nerve disease that makes her speech slurred and her movements awkward.

Georgia comes across as much sharper than the drippy Beagle, and she has one simple goal: She’d like to experience sex before her life ends, or before her ability to enjoy the activity disappears.

There are some nice characters here, including Georgia’s aunt, played by Elizabeth Ashley, who might be sweet on Dern’s leathery butcher.

Ashley and Dern are members of a hard-living generation of actors (the Method School by way of ’60s counterculture), and they look and sound as though they’ve felt every one of the miles they’ve logged. It’s fun to watch them together, although they’re not always in sync with whatever tone the rest of the movie is trying to achieve.

And “tone” is the main problem here. Some of the very “written”-sounding dialogue is cleverly done, but the largely mumbled style of delivery doesn’t always fit it. And Beagle’s diffidence seems to exist in order to insert drama into the story at various points, not because any 20-year-old guy would actually do these things.

“The Cake Eaters” does have a fine central turn by Kristen Stewart, the young star of the “Twilight” phenomenon. This thankfully unsentimental actress, who resembles Masterson, owns the film in a way that never shows off. She looks destined to have the kind of career her director might have had.