Exactly what it sounds like, the Pick of the Week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the pick of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Movie Of The Week…
“As a girl you see the world as a giant candy store filled with sweet candy and such. But one day you look around and you see a prison and you’re on death row. You wanna run or scream or cry but something’s locking you up. Are the other folks cows chewing cud until the hour comes when their heads roll? Or are they just keeping quiet like you, planning their escape?” — Justine
I love The Good Girl. My husband pretends to be worried whenever I watch it since it is, at its most basic level, the story of a woman who has an affair. But to look at it that way misses the point. It’s a commentary on the prisons in our lives — particularly the prisons we create for ourselves. It’s depressing, and all too familiar.
If asked to list selections from the filmographies of Jennifer Aniston and Jake Gyllenhaal, I doubt most people would remember The Good Girl, if they ever knew about it in the first place. But it contains almost an embarrassment of riches, featuring Aniston, Gyllenhaal, Zooey Deschanel, John C. Reilly, Tim Blake Nelson, and Mike White, who also wrote the script.
Aniston stars as Justine Last, a 30-year-old small town woman who works at the cosmetics counter of the local Retail Rodeo store. Her life consists of monotonous days giving makeovers, which she hates, and coming home her to her house painter husband, Phil (Reilly), and his partner Bubba (Nelson), who spend their evenings watching TV and getting stoned. Dissatisfied with her life, Justine strikes up a friendship with 22-year-old Holden Worther (Gyllenhaal), a new Retail Rodeo employee. A loner and writer who named himself after the protagonist from Catcher in the Rye, Holden dropped out of college due to a drinking problem and is living at home with his parents. Holden and Justine bond over a mutual feeling of not being “gotten” by the important people in their lives. “I saw in your eyes that you hate the world,” says Justine. “I hate it too.” Though initially hesitant to move their relationship from friendship to love affair, as Holden wants, Justine is drawn to Holden and — perhaps more keenly — the promise of something new and different. “Are you going to the grave with unlived lives in your veins?” she asks herself, succumbing to her feelings for Holden, and all the consequences of an affair in a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business.
I’m intensely curious about what was going on in Mike White’s life when he wrote this script. He appears on screen as a Bible-thumping Retail Rodeo security guard; you may know him better as the doofy guy from School of Rock, which he also wrote. The Good Girl is both beautiful and sad, but not without wry humor. Though it’s certainly not a comedy, great use is made of Nelson, Reilly, and Deschanel throughout, adding a little “feast” to the “death’s head,” if you will. A simple and beautiful score only adds to the mood. Though some may have been skeptical of Aniston in the role of Justine, it makes perfect sense to me to cast her as someone feeling trapped by circumstance — she was, after all, at the height of the Friends/Rachel/Brad Pitt-era hysteria/fishbowl when this came out in 2002.
The Good Girl speaks to the prisons we create for ourselves, and how those prisons turn us inward to selfish beings, blind to the others around us and their own prisons. Justine indirectly blames Phil for many of her own bars. She skipped college years ago because she was afraid she’d lose Phil, and now resents his pot smoking and laziness in everything from fixing the TV to fixing his sperm (they haven’t been able to conceive, though she herself is fertile). Her own unhappiness and focus on Holden blind her to the fact that Phil’s in his own prison, and his smoking is his way of escape. Phil’s best friend Bubba has his prison too, living in Phil’s shadow, longing to be him and to have his life and a girl like Justine. When Bubba learns of Justine’s affair, he sees in it a way to escape his own prison, and sets in motion a chain of events that force Justine to face up to the less pleasant consequences of the affair. What does she want? To what lengths will she go to get it? What changes will she make in her life? Will she pursue a new course with the mercurial Holden, or do “the right thing” and maintain the status quo with Phil? Whether she makes the right decision in the end — or if there even is such a thing as the right decision — is left up to the viewer. As in real life, there’s no clear answer here, and that might be the most depressing thing of all.
