If you crossed The Catcher in the Rye and Madame Bovary and set the result in a small Texas town, it would be something like this film. It has all the angst and adolescent turmoil of the former and the emotional desolation and individual isolation of the former. Toss in the work of a fine cast and the star power of Jennifer Aniston and you've got yourself a funny, touching movie.
Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) is a 30 year old woman who got married too soon and has found herself trapped in a boring job and to a pot-headed house painter. Stewing in her own misanthropy, Justine is only roused from her self-pity and self-destructive anger by a young man who gets a job at the Retail Rodeo where Justine works. The 22 year old (played by Jake Gyllenhall) calls himself Holden, after the J.D. Salinger character, and refers to the name his parents gave him as his "slave name". Those two things tell you pretty much everything there is to know about him. Justine begins an affair with Holden, if you can call sex in a motel after work an affair, and it seems to brighten up Justine's miserable existence. But Justine soon realizes that Holden, for all his overly-sensitive pretensions, is just an angry and unstable boy who has fixated on her as the answer to all his dreams. Then her husband's best friend uncovers her infidelity, touching off a chain of events that forces Justine to choose between the life she thinks she hates and another existence she can't even imagine.
I quite liked this film. It's smart and honest and has just a bit of snark, while acknowledging how immature such snark usually is. The Good Girl makes you think about personal unhappiness and the choices and attitudes that create it. The main characters of Justine and Holden are terribly discontented with their lives, yet as the story goes along it makes you understand that probably none of the characters are living the lives of their dreams. The difference is they aren't torturing themselves and everyone else over it. Most movies that focus on the quiet desperation of ordinary life either embrace too completely the idea that normal, unexceptional lives are awful things or they are too viciously judgmental of such common angst. The Good Girl takes a more mature and measured perspective. It validates Justine's unhappiness with the life she chose by marrying the first man she really loved but holds her accountable for not making the best of that life. Her actual problem isn't her circumstances. It's her own lack of ambition or imagination to do anything to improve them.
As the story unfolds, you can see that the other characters have found ways to deal with their individually unsatisfying lives. Justine's husband smokes pot to escape. The security guard at the Retail Rodeo has his religious faith. An older co-worker of Justine's has a stoic determination to make the best of things and a disdain for those who don't. A younger co-worker uses snide sarcasm to lash out at a world that doesn't meet her standards. But they all do something, while Justine and Holden just wallow in their anger and resentments.
Now, there's a subplot in the story involving the best friend of Justine's husband that's much more over-the-top and overtly self-aware than the rest of the movie. It explicitly details some of the themes that remain under the surface of the rest of the film and you might find it either bracing or off putting. I suppose it depends on your tolerance for a smart script hitting you over the head a few times to make sure you get its point.
Jennifer Aniston got a lot of praise when this movie first came out and it was deserved. She's able to convey the subtle nature of Justine's passivity so that you can empathize with the character, even when she's not all that sympathetic. Jake Gyllenhall is also very good with the dual nature of Holden. On the one hand you can see how Justine was attracted to him as a kindred spirit, but on the other hand Gyllenhall always keeps the stunted emotional side of Holden in view of both Justine and the audience. John C. Reilly as Justine's husband does some nice work as well. He takes a character that is supposed to be dumber and shallower than either Justine or Holden and makes him into a person and not a plot device.
There have been a lot of independent films made about the ordinary lives or ordinary people. Most of them suck because they're made by filmmakers who either hate such ordinary people or see their lives as nothing more than metaphors to be exploited. The Good Girl does none of that, which makes it a movie worth seeing.
Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston) is a 30 year old woman who got married too soon and has found herself trapped in a boring job and to a pot-headed house painter. Stewing in her own misanthropy, Justine is only roused from her self-pity and self-destructive anger by a young man who gets a job at the Retail Rodeo where Justine works. The 22 year old (played by Jake Gyllenhall) calls himself Holden, after the J.D. Salinger character, and refers to the name his parents gave him as his "slave name". Those two things tell you pretty much everything there is to know about him. Justine begins an affair with Holden, if you can call sex in a motel after work an affair, and it seems to brighten up Justine's miserable existence. But Justine soon realizes that Holden, for all his overly-sensitive pretensions, is just an angry and unstable boy who has fixated on her as the answer to all his dreams. Then her husband's best friend uncovers her infidelity, touching off a chain of events that forces Justine to choose between the life she thinks she hates and another existence she can't even imagine.
I quite liked this film. It's smart and honest and has just a bit of snark, while acknowledging how immature such snark usually is. The Good Girl makes you think about personal unhappiness and the choices and attitudes that create it. The main characters of Justine and Holden are terribly discontented with their lives, yet as the story goes along it makes you understand that probably none of the characters are living the lives of their dreams. The difference is they aren't torturing themselves and everyone else over it. Most movies that focus on the quiet desperation of ordinary life either embrace too completely the idea that normal, unexceptional lives are awful things or they are too viciously judgmental of such common angst. The Good Girl takes a more mature and measured perspective. It validates Justine's unhappiness with the life she chose by marrying the first man she really loved but holds her accountable for not making the best of that life. Her actual problem isn't her circumstances. It's her own lack of ambition or imagination to do anything to improve them.
As the story unfolds, you can see that the other characters have found ways to deal with their individually unsatisfying lives. Justine's husband smokes pot to escape. The security guard at the Retail Rodeo has his religious faith. An older co-worker of Justine's has a stoic determination to make the best of things and a disdain for those who don't. A younger co-worker uses snide sarcasm to lash out at a world that doesn't meet her standards. But they all do something, while Justine and Holden just wallow in their anger and resentments.
Now, there's a subplot in the story involving the best friend of Justine's husband that's much more over-the-top and overtly self-aware than the rest of the movie. It explicitly details some of the themes that remain under the surface of the rest of the film and you might find it either bracing or off putting. I suppose it depends on your tolerance for a smart script hitting you over the head a few times to make sure you get its point.
Jennifer Aniston got a lot of praise when this movie first came out and it was deserved. She's able to convey the subtle nature of Justine's passivity so that you can empathize with the character, even when she's not all that sympathetic. Jake Gyllenhall is also very good with the dual nature of Holden. On the one hand you can see how Justine was attracted to him as a kindred spirit, but on the other hand Gyllenhall always keeps the stunted emotional side of Holden in view of both Justine and the audience. John C. Reilly as Justine's husband does some nice work as well. He takes a character that is supposed to be dumber and shallower than either Justine or Holden and makes him into a person and not a plot device.
There have been a lot of independent films made about the ordinary lives or ordinary people. Most of them suck because they're made by filmmakers who either hate such ordinary people or see their lives as nothing more than metaphors to be exploited. The Good Girl does none of that, which makes it a movie worth seeing.