It would be easy
to blame Very Good Girls on the
restricting roles offered to female leads in Hollywood, with a cliché love
triangle and forced moments of sexual awakening amongst teen girls being the
only subjects of interest in the film. However true this may be in most cases, Very Good Girls is the directorial debut
of female screenwriter Naomi Foner, proving that predictable female
coming-of-age fodder can feel false regardless of who makes it. Although there
is plenty of forced melodrama in the derivative love triangle at the center of
the story, what is most surprising is how much the male gaze remains alive at
the hands of a female filmmaker.
The two leads
are played by Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen, who both play teenage girls
despite a five-year age difference. While twenty-year-old Fanning carries much
more of the narrative believably, it is much more of a stretch imaging
twenty-five-year-old Olsen to be seventeen and a virgin. The narrative begins
rather predictably, with both Lilly (Fanning) and Olsen (Gerri) making a pact
to lose their virginity before leaving for college. They seem to be having
their sexual awakening specifically for the sake of the narrative, the film
opening with a random streaking sequence on a crowded summer beach. Soon after
that, these two girls meet a moody street artist named David (Boyd Holbrook),
and there is no need in the narrative to develop their characters beyond their
sexual curiosities and petty jealousies.
Each of the two
girls have families, which we get brief glimpse of amidst the clutter of the
film. Lilly catches her father (Clark Gregg) having an affair, sending her
mother (Ellen Barkin) spiraling. This is a sub-plot barely addressed, the film
favoring awkwardly shot scenes of fondling and caressing instead. Olsen’s
family is boisterous and irregular, but far from unhappy. Her father (Richard
Dreyfuss) is obtrusive in his honest banter, and it seems to have rubbed off on
his children, witnessed and endured by the family matriarch. Despite having
Demi Moore in this role, there is nothing altogether memorable about Olsen’s
mother. If anything, having two stars in the roles of the mother only further
highlights their absence from their daughter’s lives.
The Blu-ray special
features include interviews and a trailer. The film itself, while fairly
cinematic in some respects, doesn’t lend itself to high definition. Nobody
needs a clearer picture of Fanning’s white ass. Nobody needed that sequence,
for that matter. I could go further, but I will practice what Foner could not
execute; restraint.
Entertainment Value:
4/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 4/10
Historical
Significance: 2/10
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