A Good Person

Ah, the things we do for love. As the hard-luck Alli­son, Flo­rence Pugh real­ly goes through it in the lat­est tor­rent of mis­cal­cu­lat­ed uplift from cineaste Zach Braff, writ­ten and pro­duced in the thick of their much-mur­mured-about roman­tic rela­tion­ship: absent Dad, alco­holic Mom, a fate­ful car crash, grief, guilt, opi­oid addic­tion, foil-smok­ing hero­in in an alley, puk­ing her­self awake in an unfa­mil­iar stair­well, a cou­ple abortive feints toward sui­cide, an inad­vis­able self-admin­is­tered hair­cut. She shoul­ders one indig­ni­ty after the next as the punch­ing bag of a cru­el, capri­cious god, though that high­er autho­r­i­al pow­er also shoots her with long, unbro­ken close­ups in wor­ship­ful thrall to her prowess as per­former. (Not to men­tion the line from her character’s lover about his pro­nounced fond­ness for her excep­tion­al derrière.)

Pugh’s great­est tribu­la­tion of all is deliv­er­ing the tin-eared dia­logue torn between the emo­tion­al sadism it heaps onto its pro­tag­o­nist and the adu­la­tion it lav­ish­es on the actress play­ing her. This dis­so­nant notion of tor­ment as trib­ute squares with a film intent on break­ing Alli­son down so that it might build her back up again, her heav­ing pain the cost of being tru­ly, ful­ly alive.

In this pair­ing of an immense­ly tal­ent­ed actor with a min­i­mal­ly tal­ent­ed direc­tor, she brings Braff clos­er than ever to real­iz­ing his dream of a movie com­prised entire­ly of cli­max­es, all rock-bot­tom nights of the soul and soar­ing sal­va­tion. Her skill also lays bare the lim­i­ta­tions of Braff’s bru­tal­iz­ing approach, illus­trat­ing that his moti­va­tion­al-poster koans of hurt and heal­ing ring even falser when spo­ken cred­i­bly. 

Braff returns to his home of New Jer­sey, depict­ed once again as a pur­ga­to­ry exter­nal­iz­ing depres­sion with its drab­ness, though he bor­rows much more than the Gar­den State from 2004’s Gar­den State. That film’s dis­trust of mood-alter­ing med­ica­tion has been updat­ed to a more well-found­ed wari­ness of painkillers, both with a numb­ing iso­la­tion artic­u­lat­ed through the absurd insuf­fi­cien­cy of a pam­phlet meant to save your life. (Pugh also does her ver­sion of Natal­ie Port­man​‘s wig­gly dance, in Braff’s esti­ma­tion the purest expres­sion of un-self-con­scious wom­an­ly won­der.) 

This time around, the for­ma­tive trau­ma set­ting our sad sack on the path toward obliv­ion takes the form of a traf­fic acci­dent that claims the lives of Allison’s soon-to-be sis­ter- and broth­er-in-law. Enabled by her wine-slug­ging, jel­ly-spined moth­er (Mol­ly Shan­non), Alli­son devel­ops a depen­den­cy on pills with­in the year both because they’re habit-form­ing, and in the deep­er nar­ra­tive sense that often super­sedes actu­al log­ic around here, because she can’t for­give her­self. Enter Mor­gan Free­man, still the voice of God to many view­ers in Pugh’s mil­len­ni­al peer group; bat­tling some demons of his own, he runs into Alli­son at a meet­ing and fig­ures it can’t be coin­ci­dence that the woman respon­si­ble for his daughter’s death has found him. 

Play­ing with explic­it­ly sym­bol­ic mod­el trains in his base­ment and bond­ing with his orphaned grand­daugh­ter (Celeste O’Connor, doing her best with a col­lec­tion of plot points wear­ing the skin of a human girl) will snap Alli­son out of her self-destruc­tive funk, a sound­track full of whis­pery indie cuts stuck in the ear­ly aughts help­ing her along. But Alli­son also makes her own kind of music and sings her own spe­cial song, as Pugh revives her long-dor­mant pre-fame singer-song­writer career with tunes she’s penned and per­formed, accom­pa­ny­ing her­self on piano. While she pos­sess­es a pleas­ing­ly dusky night­club voice, these scenes put her ample abil­i­ties to grat­ing use, just as her bone-deep actor­ly con­vic­tion has been made to laun­der a maudlin and mawk­ish redemp­tion arc. 

Dis­pelling the image of a woman held hostage by her beau’s van­i­ty project, Pugh (also a pro­duc­er on the pic­ture) has been vocal about the pride she takes in this film while work­ing the media cir­cuit, a cour­tesy we learned she doesn’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly pay dur­ing the Don’t Wor­ry Dar­ling press cycle. And it’s under­stand­able, in that the role cus­tom-made for her pro­vides the spotlit chance to show her stuff that all thes­pi­ans dream of. But ulti­mate­ly, she gives too much to a film that demands every­thing of the peo­ple mak­ing and watch­ing it. The relent­less pum­mel of pathos wants to break our hearts, mak­ing the fatal pre­sump­tion that we were in love from the start, too.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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