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At first you think, oh no, a Texan Rachel Green. This is
after Jennifer Aniston’s twangy voice-over kicks in
right after the credits of The Good Girl. But then,
the movie gets started, and I’ll be damned if Aniston doesn’t
just blow you away with her performance.
Aniston plays Justine Last, a small-town young married who
spends days wasting away behind the cosmetics counter at the
Retail Rodeo and nights listening to her aimless husband (
Reilly) and his best friend Bubba ( Nelson) speculate
on wall-painting techniques while the two puff the Magic Dragon.
Needless to say, this isn’t the life she had planned for herself
when she graduated high school. But now, 30 years old and
no closer to leaving town than she was 10 years ago, Justine
has become resigned to live in this sealed-off little world
where men talk without thinking, women create false images
of their own happiness, and none of them have any prospects.
This is until she meets Holden Worther ( Gyllenhaal,
doing his broody thing so well). A Catcher in the Rye
fan (hence his name), Holden works one of the cashier’s stations
at the Retail Rodeo. He always keeps to himself, and in a
place where people endlessly talk about nothing, Holden’s
introversion appeals to Justine. And so she befriends him,
and the two eventually start an affair based on their mutual
realization that, hey, we’re outcasts. Let’s be different
together!
The Good Girl has some truly profound moments lingering
throughout its running time, but if it isn’t in the end quite
the sum of its parts, it’s definitely an ambitious, truthful
examination of what makes an outsider an outsider. These are
characters who just “want to get gotten,” who find that hating
the world is a crutch to help them function in it. They want
to break out of the lives they’ve been dealt, but at the same
time, are afraid to destroy what’s worked for so long. Such
is the dichotomy of the outcast, and screenwriter White
and director Arteta know this. Their first feature
together, 2000’s Chuck And Buck, also examined what
it’s like not to fit in, but where that film’s main character
refused to grow up, to live life as a responsible adult with
normal relationships, The Good Girl’s two leads are
disaffected precisely because they’ve grown up. They can’t
stop themselves from being distanced from the world, and yes,
they are being distanced instead of doing the distancing
themselves, and it’s something they’re helpless to fight off.
The Good Girl’s ultimate message seems to be an argument
for the involuntary nature of alienation, how someone can
be fully aware of her isolation, even embarrassed or ashamed
by it, but in the end has no power to undo it.
Throughout The Good Girl, and especially in Gyllenhaal’s
scenes, there’s this idea that being different somehow makes
you a better person, that just beating to a different drum
automatically makes your drum sound better. This is the central
conceit to the character of Holden Worther, but it goes beyond
that. Looking closer, it’s possible to understand Holden’s
arrogant-outsider attitude as a tool he can use to find someone
genuine. The only thing he wants in this world is for someone
to get him. At one point, he tells Justine, “You don’t
get me,” and, in his mind, this is the harshest accusation
anyone can hear. It’s the ultimate crime: it makes you just
like everyone else.
But Justine isn’t like everyone else; we know that. Aniston
plays her as a sometimes baffled, usually overwhelmed, always
frustrated hausfrau-type who wants to act out against the
people keeping her down but doesn’t really know how to do
that. Say what you want about “Friends,” but the last two
seasons have really uncovered a brilliantly mature side to
Aniston’s acting, and, for her, The Good Girl seems,
strangely, the natural extension from the confines of the
weekly sitcom to the openness of the feature drama, because,
while The Good Girl does illustrate the freedom of
film, the story feels very cramped. This is a good thing,
though, because Justine feels the same way. It’s her life
we’re watching, and if she’s going to be uncomfortable in
it, then we are too. This is the film’s attitude, that life
is the way it is. At one point, a character says, “Don’t steal,
and don’t be disturbed.” He then proceeds to scoff at his
own advice. That’s the crux of The Good Girl right
there. People understand what they need to do to change. But
the fact is, they couldn’t care less.
—Cole Sowell
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