Dir. Miguel Arteta, US/Germany/Netherlands, 2002, 93 mins
Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Nelson, Mike White, Deborah Rush
Review by Jean Lynch
In 2004, a film starring Ashton Kutcher highlighted one of the more intriguing theories of popular science, namely The Butterfy Effect. That particular tale, a sci-fi thriller, was a mind-bending assault on the senses but the theory – that a butterly flapping it’s wings can set in motion a tornado hundreds of miles away – had already been employed to effective use, quietly and unstated, two years previous in Miguel Arteta’s The Good Girl.
The film is occasionally narrated by Justine (Aniston), the ‘good girl’ of the story. By day she works at the Rodeo retail store, and then comes home to her stoned, painter workman husband, Phil (Reilly), and his equally dorkish workmate, Bubba (Nelson). Their inane conversations about the nature of paint – wouldn’t it be great to have invisible paint, or a paint that changed the molecular structure of houses – is pointedly the metaphorical equivalent of watching paint dry and, as Justine joins them, she’s physically in the room but mentally and emotionally they’re miles apart.
Aniston puts in a heart-wrenching performance as the woman who is evidently all too painfully aware that her life has stagnated but lacks the impetus to do anything about it.
Until, that is,l a new boy starts at the Rodeo retail store. And – because ‘I saw in your eyes that you hate the world; I hate it too’ – she reaches out to him. In the flap of a butterfly’s wing, she sets in motion the chain of events that will have profound effects on not only her own life but on those around her.
At first reluctant to embark on an affair, she agonisingly asks herself the question ‘Is this your last best chance? Are you going to take it? Or are you going to the grave with unlived life in your veins?’ As the traffic lights ahead of her turn green, it galvanises her into action and heeds their message: ‘go!’
Tom “Holden” Worther (Gyllenhaal) is a troubled young man who styles himself on the unstable protagonist of J.D. Salinger’s cult novel of disaffected youth ‘Catcher in the Rye’, in which the anti-hero plummets into a world of fantasy before ending up in a mental institution.
From here on in there is a sad inevitability to what is essentially a morality tale. Tragically for Justine she is, by and large, ‘a good girl’. She calls herself an adulteress and a liar, and her attempt to put things right, by attending a bible reading class with Phil, quickly go awry when it she espies Holden’s parents in the crowd. She considers herself a ‘bad friend’ to workmate Gwen, feeling she let her down in her hour of need. The strange thing is, she’s not wrong in her observations, but her actions are the desperate attempts of a woman in search of something more, because the people around her are oblivious to her plight, including the catalyst himself, Holden. Instead of heeding Justine’s inner turmoil, he relates the situation only to himself, saying that she doesn’t ‘get him’, and placing pressures on her that she could otherwise do without. Undeniably, her relationship with Holden and it’s horribly consequential repercussions are a steep learning curve for the housewife, but had she been just a little less ‘needy’ she would have realised, as the audience does, that obsessive Holden is a just a little – well – creepy!
From that one moment of reaching out to a kindred soul, Justine finds herself in a series of progressive situations that includes blackmail, further deceit, more adultery, theft, betrayal and death. And yet, she’s just an ordinary girl who feels a little bit sad about the hand dealt to her in life. As we watch fate play its mischievous hand, the audience cannot help but feel ‘there but for the grace of god...’
Aniston is wonderfully understated in this role, barely registering her emotions. It doesn’t matter – her eyes say it all. As Rachel Green, she displayed an inate ability for comedic timing; here, in a role that requires her to display an inner passion within an outwardly restrained facade, tackling the situations that arise with simmering but contained resignation, she turns in a perfectly considered, intelligent performance. Gyllenhaal, as the youth on the edge, is unnerving. The sensitive boy who just might have been Justine’s salvation slowly uncoils his almost autistic self-made make-believe world, one in which if you’re not with him you’re against him. He is selfish in the way that a child is selfish and the ensuing intricacies of his and Justine’s relationship demonstrate a mature and subtle interplay between the actors. Credit must also go to John C. Reilly who, as Phil, turns in a sensitive performance, tracing a character arc that moves from clown to cuckold to true lover.
The Good Girl may be a comedy but it is painfully so, leaving us laughing uncomfortably at the cruel tricks that life plays on us together with the attempts we make to thwart them. They say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and fate, it seems, can look kindly on those who survive the test. Like the story that Holden has written about Justine’s life – a bit different to those about his own, but yet similar – so ends her cautionary tale. The difference is made by the journey having been undertaken.
The Good Girl is available to buy and rent from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, and is released as part of the Jake Gyllenhaal Collection on 2nd October, 2006.
DVD extras include:
Audio commentary by Director Miguel Arteta and writer/actor Mike White
Scene specific audio commentary by Jennifer Aniston
Alternate ending montage
Gag reel
Deleted scenes with optional commentary
Scene access
Interactive menus
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