6 - THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2002
'Good Girl' captures small-town atmosphere
FILM SNOB
While perusing the walls of my local video store, I still feel a pain in my craw when I see In the Bedroom. Characters like Sissy Spacek's just don't exist, especially in small towns.
James Owen
jowen@kansan.com
I am told that I could never separate my small-town experiences when trying to objectively examine the film. Well, I believe comedy-drama The Good Girl, which puts Jennifer Aniston in a small town, gets its characters down cold and reveals the ins and outs of small town purgatory.
Justine Fast (Aniston) is a woman who is slowly watching herself die at the young age of 30. She works as the assistant make-up counter girl at The Retail Rodeo, which could only be described as a combination of a Dollar General Store, Macy's, and the fifth circle of hell. The overhead lights barely work, and all of the employees walk around like apathetic zombies. If this were not bad enough, Justine has to go home to see her husband, Phil, played by John C. Reilly, and his lag-about painting partner, Bubba, played by Tim Blake Nelson, sprawled out on the couch in a stoned stupor. All she wants to do is
escape, but how is that possible with a child-desiring husband and a job that chains her forever behind a make-up counter?
One day, the store gets a new check-out clerk. Holden (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a textbook example of small-town angst: After dropping out of college because of a drinking problem, he moves back home with his folks with nothing to do but sit around and write bad short stories. Anyone who went to high school knew some self-anointed genius like this guy. But Justine sees something in him.
With Holden, in dingy motels, in parked cars, in the store warehouse Justine finds the ultimate passion: a reason to keep going: But anyone knows that in a town that small, secret affairs remains that way for only a short period of time.
"Aniston plays Justine with the perfect amount of bitterness and sorrow, while most actors playing adulterous characters feel that only lust needs to be conveyed"
The most admirable thing about the script is the way it allows situations and characters to linger. The Retail Rodeo is filmed in such a way that everything about it feels mundane with a cloud of horror hovering slightly above. Everything from the Jordache jeans display to the Bible-loving security guard becomes such familiar background that the audience is trapped in the store right alongside Justine.
Director Miguel Arteta (Chuck and Buck) either grew up around or researched the look of these places pretty well. The look is all there, and writer Mike White
(who does double-duty as the security guard) has a knack for some very clever dialogue.
Aniston plays Justine with the perfect amount of bitterness and sorrow, while most actors playing adulterous characters feel that only lust needs to be conveyed.
The best moments in her performance come when Justine and Phil are lying in bed. Justine is staring off into nothingness, and Phil is right behind her trying to figure the situation out. No back-and-forth and no raised voices. This is the real pain of a damaged relationship.
The end of the film is wrought with too much plot. It's a pity because the film breathed extremely well as a study of character and place. But the end is a payoff that doesn't feel cheap and doesn't feel like a cop-out.
It works out the way many things work out in our lives: Not much changed, but the lessons were worth learning.