The Good Girl

The Good Girl is a film from Chuck & Buck director Miguel Arteta and Chuck & Buck writer and star Mike White, produced by 20th Century Fox's Fox Searchlight Pictures division. The movie stars Jennifer Aniston, Jake Gyllenhaal, Tim Blake Nelson, Zooey Deschanel, John C. Reilly and John Carroll Lynch. The movie was released on August 7, 2002.

Plot

Justine Last (Aniston) faces a boring life each day. Working at the Retail Rodeo discount store, married to her pot-smoking husband (Reilly), and dealing with the same people, same places, same everything. Until she meets fellow worker Thomas Worther (Gyllenhaal), who calls himself Holden, after Holden Caulfield (a character in the novel The Catcher in the Rye). The two become friends, but it isn't long before the two spark an affair that brings fleeting comfort for Justine as much as it threatens to ruin her marriage and reputation. As the affair heats into an obsession, Justine must decide whether to keep the life she has now or leave it behind forever.

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In some ways, the film is a female, modern American retelling of The Sorrows of Young Werther, a loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about a suicide and unrequited love, hence the character's name "Worther".

Related Topics:
The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe

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