BEFORE: No clue what this film is about, I chose it not for the subject matter, but it popped up as one of the most logical steps to help me link from Father's Day to the start of the Doc Block, which will still be in 5 days, even after my last-minute addition yesterday and reversing the order of the the next four films. I added one, but also dropped "Roger Dodger", which I'll have to get to another time. It's not like I've passed on that film three or four times already...
Scoot McNairy carries over from "A Complete Unknown".
THE PLOT: A woman in New York, who seems to have things under control, is faced with a trauma that makes her life unravel.
AFTER: You know, I said that June was a month for Dads and Grads, then I went ahead and focused on the Dads and forgot all about the Grads. (It's also Pride Month, I know, but except for Roy Cohn in "The Apprentice", I just haven't been able to work anything appropriate in - at least when I get to the Doc Block there will be docs about Bob Fosse and Liza Minnelli, so just, you know, hang in there. I've got another Elton John doc and one about queer stand-up comics but they won't be in the chain until July). Right, grads, which means high school students, who are future grads. So here we go, half of this film is flashbacks to when Tifani, the lead character, was in high school at the prestigious Brentley school, the other half shows her as an adult, now going by Ani, in the weeks leading up to her wedding, while also deciding between taking a job at the New York Times or moving to London to get into an MFA program.
But her past trauma is re-activated when she's contacted by a documentary filmmaker who's making a film about the school shooting that she survived. It's here where the title of the film starts to make sense, only by the middle of the film I wasn't sure if it was meant to be completely ironic, when you consider what we all learn along the way from the flashbacks. Then by the end of the film, who knows, maybe it's meant to be an authentic title after all, it's all about how you look at things, I guess.
The filmmaker wants to interview Ani and get her side of the story, because another survivor, Dean Barton, who survived the shooting but lost the use of his legs, has agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, and he's also put forth a theory that Ani was somehow complicit in the shooting. OK, we're intrigued, but perhaps Dean is full of crap or perhaps Dean has his own agenda, or hell, maybe the filmmaker is saying Dean said this JUST to get Ani to agree to tell her story. Either way, settle down, because it's going to be a while until we all learn what went down that day. In the meantime there are dress fittings and guest seating charts to work out, plus invitations have to go out, then there's the rehearsal dinner, and every once in a while we see Ani imagining that she's stabbing her husband or commiting some other kind of atrocity, and then she binge-eats three slices of pizza, so it's possibly that she's still not quite come to terms with her trauma.
Anyway, the flashbacks begin and the rest of the film plays out in a sort of split timeline, bouncing between past and present. You probably know how I feel about this kind of film, so I don't really need to say it again - this is only useful and allowable when one timeline gives us insight, intentional or accidental, to the other timeline. This is one of those cases, because we really have no idea what happened in the past, so probably when those details are revealed, it should give us some insight to Ani's state of mind in the present, why she has vivid waking dreams of stabbing people whenever she picks up a knife. Yeah, maybe don't have the rehearsal dinner at a steakhouse, just saying.
Ani really gets triggered when she goes out to dinner with her fiancé and another couple, the woman is her fiancés workmate, but that woman's husband is Mr. Larson, who was a teacher at Brentley, one that Ani turned to for help after a house party where she had sex with three boys from school, and since she didn't want to have sex with them, that's classified as a gang rape. Dean was one of the three boys, and Mr. Larson got in trouble for letting the kids go home unsupervised from a school event, which is when the gang rape occurred. Ani refused to allow the principal to call her mother because she felt embarrassed over what happened, but obviously that would have been the right thing to do. Instead she told her friend Arthur about it, and Arthur and his friend Ben had been bullied by the same three boys, so yeah, this is becoming clearer now, Arthur and Ben shot up the school to get their revenge on their bullies, who were also the ones who raped Ani.
Dean became an advocate for gun control, and Ani, encouraged by her magazine editor, starts to feel the need to tell her story in print (umm, why not just tell your truth in the documentary? That would probably be easier, though I see how writing the article could be more cathartic.) and then she also approaches Dean at a book signing. Dean does agree that the situation was very confusing, but OK, sure, he probably ignored her cries to stop, but since he's got a wife and daughter and has done SO much good work for gun control, plus he's in a wheelchair, he appeals to her good nature. Just kidding, he threatens to double down on his claim that Ani was in league with the shooters if she comes forward with a rape accusation.
Look, it's 2 am and I just got home from working late at an event, so this is probably going to come out all wrong, but of course Ani should speak her truth about what happened to her. Of course if she was raped she should come forward and talk about it, even if she didn't talk about it then. But two of her rapists were shot in the attack and the third lost the use of his legs - it's not a trauma competition, nor should it be. It's a very weird place to be when you find yourself saying that your gang-rape is a bigger trauma then getting shot. Whatever else you feel, you're alive and your rapists aren't, isn't that, umm, something? Sure, tear Dean's life apart and call him out in print if you feel you have to, just, I don't know, try not to enjoy that too much?
More women read the article and come forward with their own stories of rape and assault, so yeah, I guess that's a good thing in the end. But I'm not sure that article is the best way to start your career at the New York Times, because then, well, what are you going to do for an encore? Again, just saying.
Directed by Mike Barker (director of "A Good Woman")
Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Finn Wittrock (last seen in "Long Weekend"), Chiara Aurelia (last seen in "Gerald's Game"), Connie Britton (last seen in "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"), Justine Lupe (last seen in "Frances Ha"), Dalmar Abuzeid (last seen in "Pompeii"), Alex Barone, Jennifer Beals (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Carson MacCormac (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Thomas Barbusca (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Isaac Kragten (last seen in "The War with Grandpa"), Gage Munroe (last seen in "Devil"), Alexandra Beaton, Nicole Huff, Rebecca Ablack, David Webster, Brigitte Robinson (last seen in "Crimson Peak"), Peter Nelson, Leah Pinsent, Sonia Beeksma, Kylee Evans, John Beale, Angela Besharah, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll (last seen in "Priscilla"), Melody Shang, Susan Hamann, Dani Pagliarello, Katie Sexton, James Gerald Hicks (last seen in "Midway"), Jessica Angleskhan, Gabrielle Hespe, Anne Windsland, Emily Klassen, Nneka Elliott (last seen in "In the Shadow of the Moon"
RATING: 5 out of 10 packages of Swedish Fish (served in a high school cafeteria?)
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