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The Good Girl

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For the Good Girl erotic shortfilm, see The Good Girl (pornography).
The Good Girl
Directed byMiguel Arteta
Written byMike White
Produced byMatthew Greenfield
StarringJennifer Aniston
Jake Gyllenhaal
John C. Reilly
Zooey Deschanel
Distributed byFox Searchlight Pictures
Release dates
August 7, 2002
Running time
93 min
LanguageEnglish
Budget$8,000,000

The Good Girl is a 2002 film from the Chuck & Buck team, with director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White. It is the only film in which Jennifer Aniston's nude body is shown; hence the R rating[citation needed].

Plot

The film starts with narration about the life of Justine Last (Jennifer Aniston), a sad and lonely 30-year-old woman living in a dusty Texas town in the middle of nowhere. She works at the local Retail Rodeo (a seedy version of Wal-Mart), with Cheryl (Zooey Deschanel), a cynical young girl who inserts subliminal profanities in announcements to the sleepwalking customers; Gwen (Deborah Rush), the overly peppy, older woman who works with Justine in the cosmetics department; and Corny (Mike White), the Bible-obsessed security guard.

Justine's home life is no better. She returns home every night to her dim-witted husband Phil (John C. Reilly), a house painter who spends more time getting high and drunk on the couch with his best friend Bubba (Tim Blake Nelson) than doing any work. Justine's life is mundane, and while she plans with Phil to have a baby to improve things, she feels trapped, and there seems to be no sign of escape.

All this changes when, one day, a new, young cashier named Holden Worther (Jake Gyllenhaal) starts working at the Retail Rodeo. Holden keeps to himself and always has his nose in a copy of The Catcher in the Rye claiming that his own life parallels that of Holden Caulfield. Justine and Holden start spending a lot of time together, having lunch every day and even hanging out after work.

One day, Holden does not show up for work, but sends a letter to Justine, telling her that if she does not meet him at 5 p.m. that day, she will never see him again. Justine plans to go, but suddenly Gwen feels unwell at work and needs to be taken to the hospital. Justine is obliged to drive her there, but abandons her at the entrance and races to meet up with Holden. Though she arrives half an hour late, Holden has waited for her. Holden and Justine agree to have a relationship, and proceed to a motel and have passionate sex. Over the next several days, Justine begins to feel more alive than she has in a long time.

Justine and Holden continue their relationship, keeping it secret from their co-workers, Phil, Justine's husband and Holden's parents. They form a habit of meeting up at the motel for sex. Justine narrowly avoids exposure on several occasions, like almost running into the motel manager at a church when she convinces Phil to go to Bible class.

Ultimately, Corny the security guard sees the two kissing on the security camera and confronts her, but ultimately agrees to stay silent. Things get more complicated when Bubba discovers and monitors the affair, then arranges to have Justine meet him at his own house and reveals what he has learned. Bubba blackmails Justine, saying that if she doesn't have sex with him, he will be forced to tell Phil. Justine reluctantly allows this, though while they are making "love", Holden is seen to be watching them. Later, Holden confronts Justine, calling her a whore for betraying him by having sex with Bubba (revealing his emotionally, and possibly mentally, disturbed side).

Several days later, Justine suddenly feels stomach cramps and her breasts begin swelling, and she doesn't know why. One of her friends casually suggests she is pregnant, and Justine realises this may be the case. A pregnancy test comes back positive, leaving Phil ecstatic, while Justine realises it is not Phil's child, but probably Bubba's. Justine later tells Holden, who insists that it his baby, while Justine can't bring herself to say otherwise.

Phil then receives the result of an earlier sperm test and learns that he is sterile due to his many years of getting high. Justine manipulates him into believing the sperm test was wrong, but Phil finds charges for the motel on their credit card bill and figures out that Justine has been having an affair. He breaks down and asks if the child is his. Justine lies and tells him it is.

Holden, wanting to convince Justine to begin a new life on the road together with the baby, robs the Retail Rodeo safe of $15,000. Then, on the run from the police, Holden arranges with Justine to meet at the motel and leave town. Justine faces a choice; live life as a fugitive with Holden, or stay in her mundane one with Phil. Justine chooses to stay, and alerts the police to Holden's location. Surrounded and not wanting to be arrested, Holden commits suicide.

The movie ends with Justine finally accepting her life with Phil, with the addition of their new baby girl.

Inspiration

The story is a modern reworking of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.[citation needed]

The film derives inspiration and source material from The Sorrows of Young Werther, a loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang Goethe about a suicide and unrequited love.[citation needed] This is especially notable due to Holden's last name, "Worther".

Cast

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Good Girl.
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