Alicia Silverstone

Cher takes clothes seriously, and Alicia Silverstone makes getting them right look like hard work. In Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995), she plays the girl’s certainty without suggesting that we should congratulate the actor for knowing better. We laughed at how much care she puts into concerns that barely matter. Her conviction also makes Cher touching: there is kindness here, even when she cannot see beyond her own social circle.

Heckerling gives that conviction a useful test in the dialogue, which Silverstone delivers as if none of the slang could possibly need explaining. Stacey Dash’s composed Dionne and Brittany Murphy’s eager Tai give her distinct people to react to, rather than merely an audience. The story loses momentum, and charm cannot quite conceal how thin it is. But Silverstone keeps Cher worth spending time with when the plot has less to offer.

The early career moved quickly from a lead in The Crush (1993) to Cher and then Batgirl in Batman & Robin (1997). That last performance drew widespread criticism, but it is a poor reason to treat Cher as an accident. The subsequent work took in comedies, independent films, television and theatre, rather than a steady succession of studio leads. By The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), she was playing Martin’s mother for Yorgos Lanthimos, part of a later move towards independent and genre films.

Lanthimos uses her again as Sandy in Bugonia (2025), but the part is too small to tell us much about what she can do. She has a few minutes on screen and exists chiefly to explain Teddy, in a film already prone to explaining itself. There is little chance for the sustained attention to a character’s concerns that makes Cher so watchable. We would welcome another role that gives her time to establish what matters to the person she is playing. Start with Clueless, and be patient when the story slows.