Cookie's Fortune

In the small Mississippi town of Holly Springs, the wealthy widow Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt lives out her days with her late husband's best friend, Willis Richland, as her caretaker and companion. When she dies, her nieces Camille and Cora are the ones who find her, and what they do next sets off a chain of events that pulls in relatives, neighbors and the local police. The family's obsession with appearances turns a private loss into a public matter, and the investigation that follows exposes secrets the townspeople would rather have kept quiet.

Robert Altman directed the film, the seventeenth of the twenty-one features he made, following The Gingerbread Man and preceding Dr. T & the Women. Anne Rapp wrote the screenplay, and Altman produced with Ernst Etchie Stroh. The large ensemble includes Glenn Close as Camille Dixon, Julianne Moore as Cora Duvall, Liv Tyler as Emma Duvall, Chris O'Donnell as Jason Brown, Charles S. Dutton as Willis Richland and Patricia Neal as Cookie, among thirty-three credited cast members.

Made for about 10 million dollars, the film took in roughly 11 million worldwide, so it barely recovered its production costs during its theatrical run. On IMDb it holds a 6.8 rating from around 14,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.4 from about 199 votes, suggesting a modest but settled reputation among viewers.