Mark Reviews Movies: LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE

Luckiest Girl Alive, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 6, 2022

Luckiest Girl Alive revolves around a narrative choice so dumbfounding and of such dubious taste that all of the movie's intentions have to be re-assessed. This is a story about trauma and how a woman has lived since then, hiding it so deeply within herself that she no longer knows if there's a trace of who she was and could have been beneath the picture-perfect façade she has put up as her personality.

Director Mike Barker's movie, with screenwriter Jessica Knoll adapting her own novel, begins as a fascinating character study, filled with caustic humor and anger boiling beneath the surface. Then, the reasons for the character's pain, deception, and outlook begin to reveal themselves, and with turn of even (and one sequence in particular), the movie's own pretense collapses.

The woman is named Ani (Mila Kunis), and she's a successful sex columnist living a dream of a life in New York City. She's engaged to Luke (Finn Wittrock), a man who comes from a long line of money.

Her career could be at a turning point with this marriage, though. She might get an editor position at a prestigious newspaper, or if Luke decides to take a job in London, Ani already has a backup plan lined up—enrollment in a graduate program and whatever possibilities might come from that. The latter option, of course, is the less appealing in a life that seems to have nothing but appeal and fortune within it (The movie's too busy with its other issues to recognize how charmed Ani's life is, whether she ends up marrying the guy and going to London, staying single and living in New York, or having either option fall through and stick to her well-paid, steady gig as a writer).

The main juxtaposition here is what we see of Ani, who displays a lot of confidence and restraint, and what we hear during a nearly constant running narration of her inner thoughts. She has done a great job convincing people that she's happy, that everything in her life is in order, and that nothing negative can touch her. In her mind, though, she's angry, imagining herself stabbing Luke when he says or does something that she doesn't appreciate, and filled with self-doubt, fearing that any little thing might make her drop the veil of perfection—or, worse, that someone might see through it.

Kunis' performance is the obvious highlight here. Even through the movie's narrative stumbles and thematic tumbles, she remains a source of constant fascination. Her performance is akin to watching the emotional equivalent of the considered way one might walk on eggshells and the fear of knowing that there's broken glass scattered among them. There's such restraint and underlying tension to her physicality, and the bitter, sarcastic, and pointed narration is more than gimmick with her delivery.

At first, the story seems to be a simple act of observation and examination, but then, a documentary filmmaker (played by Dalmar Abuzeid) arrives, hoping to interview Ani for his current project. We learn that she survived a mass shooting at a private school about 15 years ago, and Dean (Alex Barone), a fellow survivor who has since become an advocate of gun control, once accused Ani of being an accomplice. This would be her chance to set the story straight once and for all.

Through flashbacks of a teenage Ani (played by Chiara Aurelia), we learn that her trauma goes deeper than and began before the shooting. Barker approach to portraying these events is questionable, as they're depicted rather graphically but almost randomly, as if the sudden and repeated shock of sexual violence is the only point. The same can be said of the sequence that portrays the school shooting, which plays more like a scene from some action movie, with Ani and her classmates avoiding an explosion and dodging bullets, with the focus on who is specifically targeting whom, while brushing aside the other lives lost.

On their own, each of these elements feels exploitative as Barker assembles them. The real distasteful quality, though, is in how the movie combines them and plays these acts of violence off each other. The point is clear: It's in Ani's moral uncertainty about the connection between these two episodes. As presented here, though, the juxtaposition of and relationship between the incidents of violence almost feels like a competition of pain and misery.

That's an awful game to be playing with issues as severe and horrific as these. If Luckiest Girl Alive understands that, there's little sign of it in this misguided experience.

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