Review of “Luckiest Girl Alive” on Netflix, starring Mila Kunis

The tony yet shady account of a successful business lady who fights to finally come to terms with a profoundly traumatic teenage experience is told in Luckiest Girl Alive, following in the not-too-distant footsteps of well-known women’s suspense thrillers like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. The majority of the feelings conveyed here are unfavourable, which is understandable considering the terrible backstory that eventually comes to light. Furthermore, the characters, especially the lead lady, don’t exactly make for the finest of company. However, what it’s eventually getting at in the end scenes does offer some difficult emotional truth and self-searching in a what-might-you-have-done-in-the-same-situation sort of way, which is at least a little more than what most tales of this ilk present.

 

The second book by Jessica Knoll, published in 2015, is set many levels below those where Succession, for example, but, at least in terms of attitude, it is in the same Manhattan neighbourhood. A stylish woman in her mid-30s with the creatively named Tifani FaNelli (Mila Kunis) is about to leave her work as the senior editor of The New York Times Magazine for a prized post as a newspaper gossip columnist. Additionally, she is soon to wed Luke Harrison, who resembles Adonis, who is a wonderful catch (Finn Wittrock). What possibly could go wrong in this image?

 

It’s something from the past, as is frequently the case. A really unpleasant occurrence that happened once in a private boarding school and that Tifani (where did they come up with that spelling?) at the time participated in covering up is revealed in various flashback snippets that are interspersed throughout the rather long-feeling two-hour running length. Tifani never revealed the entire truth despite the fact that there was a fatality as a result of the crime, and she avoided any serious consequences both legally and emotionally.

 

Her ideal existence, however, is suddenly in danger of being upended by the long arm of the law—or at the very least, by rumors—just as she is about to advance both romantically and professionally. The novel was adapted for the film by Knoll, and the script significantly front-loads exposition by having minor characters inform the main characters of things they already know: Someone tells the genuine, could-have-been victim, “You’re a survivor of the bloodiest school massacre in history!” as if she could have forgotten. But as soon as the intimate slaughter that killed several students is shown in flashback, much of what happens next depends on how much journalist Tifani decides she wants to publish about the events that actually took place roughly 20 years before.

 

Someone helpfully says, “The past is never dead,” and it’s obvious from Tifani’s neuroses that she’s still quite concerned by what she went through back then. It’s unsettling how drastically different Chiara Aurelia looks from Kunis as the younger Tifani since she portrays the character as appearing to be nearly perpetually tense and tightly wound.

 

Tifani does have good reason to be tense, but Kunis’ performance stays in clenched mode for the majority of the film, with little character development or modulation, preventing this intelligent and talented lady from displaying a wide range of hues and emotions. Despite her heartbreaking predicament, it’s difficult to really warm up to her. The script might have benefited from one or two scenes in which Tifani and her future husband showed genuine tenderness, which may have increased viewer interest in their connection.

 

British director Mike Barker — whose many TV credits including The Handmaid’s Tale, Fargo and Broadchurch outclass his big-screen efforts to date — keeps this moving swiftly and coherently, which allows the young characters’ behavior under shocking duress seem plausible. The long-term question is whether they will finally come clean, no matter what, or continue to keep their dreadful truths a secret for the rest of their lives.

 

Although Luckiest Girl Alive was created in accordance with a specific formula to appeal to a specific audience of largely young women, it does have enough “What would you have done under the same circumstances?” aspects to give it some credence. Even though it follows a template, the story nevertheless explores how guilt from dubious behaviour in the past persists and how people still fight to deal with it years after the event.