If clueless can take a form in a person, then it would be Justine (Jennifer Anniston) in “The Good Girl”. As a cosmetic sales girl in a retail shop of a remote town with nothing happening around it, she is some where in the mid life crisis at the age of thirty. Her husband Phil (John C. Reily) is a stoner at home and a house painter outside of it. I can imagine the town in the movie. Nothing happens with same people over and over again. It is peaceful but in boring known way. And before you know, there is the addiction created by it. You are trapped and institutionalized. You hate the town but still cannot leave it. With enough characters of routine written over them, one can drown into the path of continues mistakes with no redemption. Sounds like an ultimate recipe for an emotional dry independent movie and yes it is. They give a very nice well made movie with nothing coming out of it.
Justine is a character I would not want to run into. It is usual to be confused and do mistakes. The process of it gets ingrained in her that she does not realize what she is doing. She does not understand the consequence or rather denies it. The action on her instincts with confirmed results of damage constantly tempts and succeeds in doing it. Justine bored out of her life starts an affair with a young co-worker, Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he calls himself. He is lost and clueless too. With plastic parents at his house, he too is in a process of doing mistakes. This commonality brings them closer and some where both of them believe that it will be great. While Holden is living in his dreamland of nice endings, Justine is caught up in between her conscience and temptation. Anniston’s Justine is shockingly convincing. The character wanders with selfish motive. There is no redemption in this and yet she continues doing it. She is going to live with the wrong doings for rest of her life but the director does not think so though. It is not a happy ending but a totally unfair ending.
These are the movies which puzzles me at conscience level. As such the making and presentation of the movie is a job well done but the content out of it is not encouraging. Some times I wonder why would some one want to make a movie which only portrays all the negativity in a character and coming out clean with no redemption being extremely unfair and disturbing. Justine works sleeps and dreams over her lies. In fact her affair is a big lie as such. Her husband is some one who has placed and convinced himself as the happy guy properly settled. He does not understand her zeal for something out of ordinary, and it is true. But does he deserve this treatment from her? Not alone the affair but even after the revealing of it, she keeps on feeding him lies. And the only good thing coming out of this is benefiting Justine. What are they trying to tell out here?
My nook and corner analysis of conscience in a movie may appear overdone but as I have said in my various reviews, a movie can be negative which should kindle the opposite, meaning something good coming out of it. Justine and the surrounding characters invoke bland and boring contradictions in life with no solution and fake happiness. They preach that a person like Justine can be clueless and selfish enough to hurt everyone around her with getting out clean as well.
The movie runs some very nice funny moments. The supporting cast brings in some deep and intense moments. Especially the friend of Phil, Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) who we realize has idolized Phil. Surprising what people make out of other people and it surprised me as it does to Justine. Jack (John Caroll Lynch), a manager with an unusual way of mourning his employee’s deaths, couple of other workers, Gwen (Deborah Rush), Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel) and Corny (Mike White) to scare Justine in different way possible forms the crux of the horror routine life she goes through.
“The Good Girl” is a finely made piece with no heart. It acts like it has a heart at times which is more towards hypocritical. We are confused on whether to sympathize, like or hate Justine. The emotion it kindles is a bland composure of mixed sickness. Director Miguel Arteta delivers a good movie with a story of no conscience posing as a bag full of empathizing guilt over Justine. Did I say before that the movie is hypocritical?
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