‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ movie review: Mila Kunis starrer is a disturbing, gripping watch

As Ani Fanelli (Mila Kunis) stalks the corridors of the shiny ladies’s journal she works in, clothed within the excellent outfit and equipment, with 5 weeks to go for her Nantucket marriage ceremony to rich, good-looking achiever Luke (Finn Wittrock), who worships the bottom upon which she walks, you’d suppose she has the whole lot. In actual fact, she might properly be the luckiest lady alive.

The place is the catch, you surprise, particularly when Ani says Luke loves her regardless of figuring out her darkest secrets and techniques? Not all of them, she rapidly amends whereas scarfing down the leftover pizza. You recognize there’s something darker happening when Ani and Luke are knives on the marriage ceremony registry. It’s triggering as Ani flashes again to blood dripping off of a knife.

Because the movie progresses, we study that Ani was concerned in horrifying occasions as an adolescent, together with a college taking pictures. Dean Barton (Alex Barone), one of many survivors, who’s wheelchair-bound, accuses Ani of complicity within the taking pictures.

When a documentary movie director, Aaron Wickersham, (Dalmar Abuzeid) approaches Ani for her aspect of the story for the nth time, Ani agrees to do it regardless of it that means she has to revisit her traumatic previous. Ani or TifAni (Chiara Aurelia) was at all times an outsider on the posh Brentley College to which she received a scholarship. Her mom, Dina (Connie Britton), slaves and squirrels away her alimony to present Ani the beginning she wants in life. Dina feels Brentley is a step in the proper path.

Doing properly at college, successful the appreciation of her English trainer, Andrew Larson (Scoot McNairy), and having fun with the friendship of the brainy boys Arthur (Thomas Barbusca) and Ben (David Webster), Ani appears to be all set to overcome the world.

Alternatively, although the curvaceous Ani along with her unruly hair doesn’t appear to slot in with the well-groomed, well-heeled set, they welcome her anyway. She is swept alongside within the wild whirly-gig of events, dancing and consuming until one thing goes horribly unsuitable climaxing within the taking pictures.

Luckiest Woman Alive tells its story in two timelines — one with the upcoming marriage and a job supply from The New York Occasions Journal (it’s at all times The New York Occasions within the films!) and the opposite detailing Ani’s her time at Brentley.

Skilfully tailored for the display from her 2015 bestselling novel of the identical title, Jessica Knoll has introduced modern considerations alive in an exhilarating movie. Kunis is sensible and brittle as Ani, as is Aurelia. The supporting solid is nearly as good, together with Justine Lupe as Ani’s greatest pal Nell, and Jennifer Beals as Ani’s no-nonsense editor Lolo Vincent.

The movie makes use of mirrors and reflections to sharpen the break up between Ani’s notion of herself and the way others take a look at her. Whereas she believes she is “a wind-up doll…flip my key and I’ll inform precisely what you wish to hear,” others naturally suppose in a different way of her.

Luckiest Woman Alive is marred by Ani’s inexplicable assembly with a fellow journalist on the finish. If you happen to can simply look away from that, the movie, just like the ebook, is a harrowing watch, gripping from the get-go.

Luckiest Woman Alive is at present streaming on Netflix