VERY GOOD GIRLS
DIRECTOR: Naomi Foner
CAST: Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Olsen, Boyd Holbrook, Ellen Barkin, Clark Gregg, Richard Dreyfuss, Demi Moore
CLASSIFICATION: 13 LS
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes
RATING: **
Naomi Foner is best known as the screenwriter of Sidney Lumet’s Running on Empty. She makes a limp directing debut with another intimate reflection on family, friendship and coming of age, Very Good Girls, which is set in contemporary Brooklyn, but informed by the same throwback countercultural sensibility as that earlier work.
Starring Fanning and Olsen as best friends determined to lose their virginity before going to college, the film rings false at almost every turn despite its naturalistic performances.
Lilly (Fanning) and Gerri (Olsen) are first glimpsed taking a naked dip at Brighton Beach in broad daylight. Why? Back on the boardwalk afterwards, they encounter David (Holbrook), a 20-something who ends up being the object of both girls’ affections.
A kind of Brooklyn Banksy, David plasters his photo-based graffiti art all over the neighbourhood while yearning to take off and see Paris for real instead of just looking at pictures.
The two girls’ families couldn’t be more different. Lilly’s mother Norma (Barkin) is an uptight WASP shrink and her father Edward (Gregg) is a doctor, both practicing out of their home. That is until Edward is caught canoodling with a patient.
Gerri’s folks are of the crunchy granola variety; her dad Danny (Dreyfuss) is a jolly old lefty, and his wife Kate (Moore) is a soulful earth mother.
Not one of these four has much of a character to play. But they serve mainly to reflect aspects of the protagonists or to provide elements for them to chafe against.
Yale-bound Lilly has a summer job as a river cruise guide, with a boss who makes unsubtle advances. Gerri is more frisky and fun, singing whimsical folk compositions at a local open mic night. Her songs and others used in the film are by Jenny Lewis. But that bid to add a veneer of hipster coolness is unpersuasive in a film that seems frozen in time. Its biggest problem is that when the conflict arises – David only has eyes for Lilly, while Gerri thinks she’ll be the one to land him – neither girl behaves in ways that are credible for 21st century New Yorkers. Lilly offers up her virginity to him on the garage floor, but keeps this news from Gerri. Out of guilt, she curtails their trysts after learning that Gerri’s family have suffered a tragedy, sending David over to console her.
The predictable pattern of their friendship being broken by lies and withheld secrets, only to be repaired at the end, plays itself out with a numbing lack of urgency. .
Fanning suggests an interior life beneath her luminous delicacy. But none of the performances is memorable. – The Hollywood Reporter
If you liked Peace, Love & Misunderstanding or In Secret, you will like this.