The Good Girl

The Good Girl is a subdued everyday drama about the nice and sensible 30-year-old Justine, who is stuck in a rut of a marriage to the unambitious Phil and is bored out of her mind in her job as a supermarket assistant in the small, dreary backwater where she lives.

Against her nature she throws herself into an affair with a colleague of only 22. He calls himself Holden after his idol Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" and the prototype of the angry young man. The affair inevitably has consequences, though, for it is impossible to keep such a passion secret in a small town. Justine is soon entangled in a web of lies, and matters are not helped by the fact that Holden turns out to be angrier and more destructive than is good for anyone. Deranged is probably the right word. Then Justine becomes pregnant. How is she to avoid hurting both her husband and Holden? Justine is, after all, a nice girl who wants to keep everyone from harm - even if it means giving up her dreams.

The Good Girl is about life's disappointments and about dreams that may or may not be realised. Jennifer Aniston shows that she can do more than light comedy in the role of the decent Justine, who for a moment throws caution to the wind and plunges into adventure. Everyday life, however, is not so easily escaped. It always catches up with you.

It may sound terribly sad, but The Good Girl certainly has humour, including the more absurd kind. It never tips over into sarcasm, though, and it is to the film-makers' credit that on the whole they stand by the film's characters.