The Good Girl

I think we all at one point or another have said, “Is this is? Is this my life?” Or at least those who haven’t had the silver spoon, the glitz, the good life. I think “The Good Girl” (before Anniston really hit superstardom) really does a certainly swell job of properly establishing the disappointments, dead-end realizations, and knowing understandings of life at its most mundane, planting us right into the world of Anniston’s, at the cosmetics counter, enduring day to day numbness and misery. Her husband is a dope, a good dope, mind you, but a painter that basically smokes weed after work, watches television from the time he gets home until bedtime, and is unaware of his wife’s unhappiness. She meets Jake Gyllenhal, an anti-social, mentally-child college dropout who took way to many drugs, limps, stares into space, talks especially slow, and seems to live in his own little world. He writes stories, often ending with him committing suicide, but Anniston finds him an odd kindred spirit, the two eventually shagging repeatedly when able. Adulterous meetings at the local cheap hotel, trysts in the storeroom, kissing in her car; these two find an intimacy that has awakened from its dormancy, giving them a reason to get up in the morning and come to a supermarket called Retail Rodeo. He is your basic grocery bagger, and he seems to have this narrow vision of just Anniston, canceling out everything else. Here’s the thing: Anniston feels John C Reilly, her husband, is a pathetic loser, a pig with no career options beyond the on-again/off-again painting of houses that might pay the occasional bill but not much beyond that. The alternative of Gyllenhal isn’t exactly much of a better situation for her, though. He’s exciting merely because, like her, he’s a lost soul feeling buried by the inanities of life. Inject this passionate affair into their lives and there’s at least something to feel when they longingly look at each other, sit at break and chatter, and meet in secret and screw. Alternatives: Anniston’s men have failings, and so she spends the film trying to determine who she wants and why. The film is a narrated by her, and she occasionally reads from the writings of Gyllenhal to speak about him, how he feels about her and what he desires for  them. It’s all a fantasy she gets sucked into. She feels good, but there’s plenty of guilt and regret, and when Gyllenhal turns out to be a reckless disaster, obsessed with her, the affair worsens Anniston’s life. Reilly starts to look more appealing as time goes on, too, because he has such a trusting, soft heart and is clueless but harmless. He has a low sperm count and at thirty, Anniston wants a child. She gets pregnant and the doc calls Reilly telling him he’s infertile so the question is raised: is this Gyllenhal’s child? Does it get any better for her? No. She pretends to be spending time with a dying co-worker who had received a parasite eating the wrong food but is actually screwing Gyllenhal at the hotel. It is a suitable lie that gets her off the hook, until she is caught by Reilly’s buddy (played by Tim Blake Nelson) and must answer for her transgressions by sleeping with him! It  only gets  worse. Gyllenhal is unable to let go of Anniston even after she says it’s over. He steals $15,000 from the Retail Rodeo and has become a fugitive with the local authorities out looking for him. He asks Anniston to run away with him and she even considers it (her life stinks that bad to her), but ultimately she realizes this would be an even bigger mishap than spending seven years of marriage with Reilly. She winds up telling her boss at the Rodeo where Gyllenhal will be staying and the end result is tragedy. While it is pretty obvious Gyllenhal is the father of the child, Reilly is gullible enough to accept Anniston’s word. It’s an apt ending where admittance of adultery and acceptance of the mistake is made, and the married couple get on with their lives, a baby to raise, and perhaps a newfound appreciation for each other that is the results of the entire experience. To me, Anniston has never been better than in this film. She doesn’t need to wear a tight black dress to show off her rockin’ figure; this isn’t Hollywood comedy with millions of dollars all over the place. This is a little indie film that has plenty of quirk (Zooey Deschanel plays a fellow employee of Anniston’s who dresses emo, remains unfiltered even though her boss just rolls his eyes, and seems to go through the job with little incentive and initiative to succeed as possible (it’s a retail  store job; this isn’t exactly the kind of job that motivates initiative), looks at adultery through a realism that doesn’t necessarily condone the act but gives reasons why it could happen(and shows the repercussions of doing so), and places an emphasis on years wasted in life that can never be recovered. What I like is that the film casts a sympathetic eye to Reilly who is not exactly the model husband but is sweet and loves Anniston even if he isn’t quite able to satisfy her emotional needs. 

I watched this on Sundance, and while I'm disappointed that the channel has taken the IFC channel's route of commercial interruptions, I remember seeing this film for the first time on Robert Redford's place for the indies. My love for The Good Girl hasn't changed. One bit.