Very Good Girls

First-time directors don't typically draw a cast with this much potential and talent. For Very Good Girls, Naomi Foner has managed to snag two of the hottest young actresses in the business right now - Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen - and surrounded them with the likes of Richard Dreyfuss, Demi Moore, Ellen Barkin and Clark Gregg. The more cynical among us would put this casting coup down to Foner's Hollywood connections: she's penned a few screenplays in her time, but is best known as the mother of thespian siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It's a shame that the final product doesn't dispel these suspicions. The film's awkward love/lust triangle never really convinces, and Very Good Girls spends most of its running time meandering aimlessly through the lives of characters who remain stubbornly opaque and unlikeable.

Lilly (Fanning) and Gerry (Olsen) are best friends who've grown up together, taking refuge in each other's houses when life gets too complicated in their own homes. It's their final summer together, and both girls make a pact to lose their virginity before Lilly goes off to college. Enter David (Boyd Holbrook), an artist who enchants both girls with his good looks and charm. As Gerry develops an outsized crush on David, Lilly plunges into a relationship with him - one that she awkwardly keeps a secret from her best friend. When tragedy strikes, Lilly is overcome by guilt, and the life-long friendship that binds the two girls together is sorely tested.

The trouble with Very Good Girls is that it's built around a tired old trope - two girls fight and fall out over the love of one guy - but fails to find anything refreshing to say about it. Foner's screenplay, for all that it's written by a woman, gives little to no real insight into either girl. Lilly, in particular, feels like a hollow shell drifting through the paces of her narrative, never really connecting with either David or her sketchy, amorous boss Fitzsimmons (Peter Sarsgaard - Foner's son-in-law). It doesn't help that David, as played by the stoically colourless Holbrook, is a walking cliché - in a scene meant to pass for deeply romantic, he actually makes Lilly read him poetry by Sylvia Plath in his dingy artist's loft.

Far more interesting are the home lives Foner has constructed around the two girls. Lilly struggles to come to terms with her father Edward (Gregg) cheating on her uptight mother Norma (Barkin), and migrates to Gerry's considerably more cheery, argumentative home, presided over by the loving but loud Danny (Dreyfuss) and Kate (Moore). There's so much more here to be explored: the way the two families intersect, and how these connections feed into the girls' friendship, lives and personalities. Unfortunately, Foner shoves it all into the background, focusing instead on the unfortunate love/lust triangle that's sprung up around Lilly, Gerry and David.

Foner's cast is, at least, worth the watch, although they don't quite manage to completely salvage the film or their characters. Fanning plays Lilly as tremulously lost, and Olsen lends her own charms to an otherwise paper-thin character who feels more like a plot device than a person. Barkin comes off best out of the entire adult cast, unearthing a little of the sorrow that haunts a woman whose husband has been conducting an affair in their own home.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who watches Very Good Girls that the movie was written twenty years ago. In many ways, the film feels hopelessly outdated. Foner makes minor edits to the script to update it to the present, which largely involve Lilly never charging her mobile phone so that she can only be contacted on a landline. But, in the larger scheme of things, the film seems out of touch with the girls of its title, miring them in adolescent angst over the same boy while failing to make them stand on their own as characters.

Lilly (Dakota Fanning) and Gerri (Elizabeth Olsen) are two best friends on their last summer before college. They meet David (Boyd Holbrook) selling ice cream at the beach who takes Lilly's picture as they walk away. Lilly catches her father cheating with one of his patients. Gerri is infatuated with David. Lilly also likes David but she can't tell Gerri. Lilly works on a ferry tour under the lecherous eyes of her boss Fitzsimmons (Peter Sarsgaard).

I want to like this movie for the two leads. There is just something unoriginal and outdated about this movie. In fact, I thought this is a period piece at first. The writing is so uninspired. Naomi Foner is the writer and director. I don't really have any big problems with her directions. It looks fine especially for her debut. The writing doesn't have anything compelling to say. The story meanders. There is a tired feel about everything in this movie. This should be a better coming-of-age movie for two skilled actresses. The story throws a lot of stuff on the screen but nothing actually sticks.

"I just wanted to make you feel better. You liked him so much." Lilly (Fanning) and Gerri (Olsen) have been best friends for years and have just graduated high school. Both are on their way to college and neither want to go there as virgins. They decide to make a pact with each other that they will both lose it before they leave. Things are going along fine until they meet and start to like the same boy. This is a plot that has been done to death. Usually though the movie is a comedy and this is a drama. The one thing this does have going for it that the others don't is great actors. The acting alone is enough to keep this from becoming too cheesy or cookie-cutter like. The movie is very predictable and again is something you have seen a hundred times but Fanning and Olsen together are a great team. There are moments that make you cry and make you angry but overall this is a movie that will give you a good feeling. Overall a movie that who's plot has been done to death but the acting makes it feel fresh. A very good coming of age movie that teen girls should watch to show what is really important in life. I give this a high B+.

Yes, I have. We all have.

Two regurgitated caricatures of the stereotypical American teenage girl, Lily and Gerry are sooooooo different yet so alike. Both fall in love with the same part shady stalker, part brooding troubled artiste~ who wants to travel the world but his list of places to visit is, like, "Rome... (d-uh)Paris..." Daddy issues are, of course, played up wonderfully, because what is any worthy female teenage protagonist if not the product of her father's neglect? What possibly can one expect when the preppy rich teenage daughter of a straight-laced household made up of detached parents and siblings goes to her dad's office to ask him to get through with this patient already they're getting late for dinn- *gasp* and henceforth a series of incredibly stupid decisions are made by two girls we initially assume to be a lot smarter, wittier, braver and mature than they turn out to be. Every trick in the book for a deep and wholesome young-woman-coming-of-age film is not simply used, but abused in the most blatant schticky manner possible; I promise you, there is more than one cameo made by Sylvia Plath.

This film is a true example of lazy filmmaking in an industry where ~gratuitous-yet-modest~ sex scenes and summertime virginity pacts are more important than honest *portrayals* let alone discussions about teenage turmoil and female sexuality. Not even that awkwardly long shot of Dakota Fanning kinda-sorta running-jogging could redeem this movie.

Don't watch it. You've already seen it. And you've seen better.

Just watched it today, and It was a nice film that involved great acting. It could've been a lot better, but I just watched it because of Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen. They are a young and talented. I've seen many films that do the "let's lose our virginity" topic. Those others films were kinda comedic in a way but this one is kind of realistic and you feel as if a person would actually do something for their own benefit. That's the real world, trust is very hard to find and the purpose of this movie is to show young teens that losing your virginity just to get over with it might not turn out the way you want it to. It's better to have patience and wait for the right person instead of grabbing anyone nearby . Clark gregg was in the movie playing a doctor and father of Dakota F. character. She see's something she shouldn't have and she also has a broken relationship with her parents. Overall this movie is good but had potential to be great so give it a go. :)