REVIEW: Very Good Girls

The movie is set in New York, and is at a very crucial time—the last summer before college. The two girls Lily (Fanning) and Gerry (Olsen) are out together and planning what they’re going to do at college, and within their conversation, they make a pact to lose their virginity before college starts.

Lily then begins a summer job; when going home one day, she meets David, an artist who immediately takes interest in Lily, and they begin to talk and hang out. They begin to meet every day after she finishes work, and the night that Lily had been waiting for comes—she loses her virginity.

This is where it gets complicated.

Gerry also meets David, (while with Lily) and invites her to a gig she’s performing at. David playfully tugs at Lily’s jacket, and then quickly mutters ‘I have to go’. Gerry, looking puzzled, asks Lily ‘What was that?’ and Lily hesitantly answers, ‘Oh nothing’ and continues home. This is now the beginning of their friendship being tested (at this point, only Gerry has mentioned to Lily that she has an interest in David).

After various sexual encounters between Lily and David, Gerry, distressed, tells Lily that she’s lost her father. Lily then—in what she thinks to be a sympathetic gesture, suggests to her to go and talk to David.

It’s the day of the funeral, and David, Lily and Gerry were all present to support; and Gerry takes David away to ask him if he would like to sleep with her. David, looking deep into Gerry’s eyes could tell it was a question due to her circumstances, and declines.

A couple of days later, Gerry tells Lily outright that she slept with David. Gerry then hugs Lily tight and whispers ‘I love you’.

A whirlwind of emotions ensues as Lily, hurt and heartbroken agrees to sleep with a guy that has had an interest in her for a while from her workplace. She then runs out on him before things got out of hand and rushes over to David’s house and questions him to why he would do such a thing. Confused, David exclaims that he didn’t do what she thinks, and said that she should ask Gerry. But within all of this argument, she has yet to tell Gerry that she has been sleeping with David for all of this time.

David ends up leaving to go to France, to continue his work as an artist and is unable to cope with all of the lies—this then pushes Lily to tell Gerry what she has been doing. This resulted in Gerry not speaking to Lily until the day she leaves to go to college— where she reveals that she actually lied about sleeping with David, and David said to her that he ‘is in love with something else’ but all in all, they rekindled their friendship.

This film was a little vague in some places—the relationship between Lily and David to me seemed more of just random sexual encounters, than just a deep, meaningful relationship. But then at the same time you could feel the intensity between the two, especially when all of the confusion with Gerry arose. If this was the director’s intention, then it was played off quite well.

The movie in general I found quite nice, it touched upon normal teenage circumstances but even the two main characters, they weren’t as 3 dimensional as they could have been. We could see that both friends were the opposite from each other, but what else? We saw the differences in their families, but what else? Did they have any deeper secrets? Because the way the friendship was portrayed was that they were best friends — but I felt the essence was caught as much as it could have been.