Cut from the same cloth as “Girl on the Train,” “The Woman in the Window,” and “Gone Girl,” director Mike Barker’s “Luckiest Girl Alive” is a psychological thriller delivered from the perspective of a woman who might be an unreliable narrator and certainly has a large trunkful of past traumatic events she, understandably, can’t seem to shake.
Based on the 2015 debut and best-selling novel of the same name by Jessica Knoll (who also wrote the screenplay), “Luckiest Girl Alive” centers on 30-something Ani FaNelli (Mila Kunis, also the co-producer), a Manhattan career woman who seemingly has it all.
Everything Is Awesome
Ani is the assistant editor and the teacher’s pet of her boss Lolo (Jennifer Beals). Ani is in charge of coming up with risqué story lines for an unnamed high-end monthly Cosmopolitan-type glossy. What Ani really wants to be is the chief editor of a more prestigious, less tacky weekly owned by the same parent company.Life off-the-clock also appears to be going great for Ani. She’s six weeks away from her Nantucket wedding to Luke Harrison IV (Finn Whitrock), a Mr. Handsome dude from old money who is a financial advisor of some sort. Like Ani, Luke isn’t interested in having any kids, making them the ideal DINK (dual income, no children) poster couple.
The first hint we get that Ani’s not hitting on all cylinders is when she has a hallucination in a cutlery store and a bizarre encounter at a restaurant soon afterwards. Not quite finishing their pizza, Luke asks the waitress for a to-go box prior to heading to the restroom. Before the waitress returns, Ani wolfs down the remaining two pieces practically whole and then purposefully spills her soda. When Luke returns, Ani tells him the waitress knocked over the drink ruining the leftovers and staining her dress.
Despite having a model’s svelte figure, Ani still harbors body image issues from her teens, which were made all the worse when she entered a tony Philadelphia private school and began being chided by the richer “cool” kids because she’s from a “poor” family.
Portrayed in flashback by Chiara Aurelia, Ani is able to temporarily get in with the nerd clique, headed by Arthur (Thomas Barbusca), something of a wing nut who doesn’t wilt under bully pressure.
Bad Parenting
Ani’s largely clueless and tone-deaf single mother Dina (Connie Britton) is of little assistance to her and relentlessly makes negative comments about her weight, which isn’t remotely excessive. Ani’s not even close to “chunky": hence, Ani’s current pizza issues.Back in the modern day, Ani is being aggressively pursued by a filmmaker who is putting together a documentary acknowledging the 20th anniversary of a school shooting which claimed seven lives and put another teen in a wheelchair. Because of Ani’s previous unpleasant interactions with three of the victims, she became a suspect but can’t clear her name because of reasons better left unstated here.
Initially claiming the novel was not autobiographical in nature when promoting its initial release, Knoll eventually revealed that it indeed was at least partially true, not that it makes much difference.
Negative self-worth, peer pressure, bullying, and unwanted sexual advances are, sadly, the norm and not the exception in U.S. high schools, and whether any of what takes place in this movie is fact-based or not is irrelevant. It certainly has become more pronounced and visible in recent years thanks to smart phones and social media and, even more sadly, it’s not likely to go away any time soon.
Some of the film’s detractors have complained that there is too much back and forth regarding the past and present time frames and, to a small degree, they’re right. However, if the story had been presented in chronological order, it wouldn’t have remotely worked. Had the filmmakers chosen a conventional, A to B linear narrative, the big plot “reveal” would have taken place halfway through the running time and ruined the rest of the movie.
A Career High Point
For the Ukrainian-born Kunis, “Luckiest Girl Alive” marks her career acting zenith. In her performance that’s not all that far removed from her Oscar-nominated turn in the equally-unnerving “The Black Swan,” Kunis never attempts to soften or sand-down Ani’s rougher edges.There are many points in the story where Ani comes across as borderline unlikeable, shallow, and narcissistic. Kunis doesn’t seem to want the audience to feel sorry for Ani; she wishes to eventually sway us into agreeing with her actions, which aren’t always initially presented as being honest or altruistic.
It is only in the final 15 minutes that the Ani character arrives full circle, proving to us she’s far deeper and committed to the truth than we’d first thought. She transforms herself into a woman of conviction who values morality and decency over what anyone might think of her or her idyllic nuptials on Nantucket Island.
