Trigger Warning: Discussions of rape, sexual violence, and trauma
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Luckiest Girl Alive
Luckiest Girl Alive is not for the faint of heart. The controversial new Netflix film breaks down media barriers and opens up much needed discourse about rape culture. This tearjerker film delivers a crucial message: believe survivors.
Ani Fanelli, played by Mila Kunis, has everything a girl could possibly want. She has a successful career as a sex columnist and is engaged to old-money Luke, played by Finn Wittrock.
Under the surface viewers are immediately clued into the fact that Ani shows symptoms of severe post traumatic stress disorder. The movie centers around discovering the mystery of Ani’s past and reconciling it with her present.
The film quickly moves into a series of flashbacks where it reveals that Ani was gang raped in high school. She also survived a fatal school shooting that left two of her rapists dead. There are three scenes where we see high school Ani, played by Chiara Aurelia, getting raped. The rape scenes were extremely graphic, and I found myself shed a tear as I sat and watched three boys each brutally strip Ani of her bodily autonomy.
This movie was an adaptation of the book Luckiest Girl Alive, written in 2015 by Jessica Knoll. In 2016, one year after the publication of her book, Knoll wrote an essay for Cosmopolitan in which she revealed that the story of Ani’s gang rape is her own. This discovery helped me understand why this movie felt so scarily real. Using real personal experiences to inspire both the novel and film are what make it so authentic.
Shortly into the movie it becomes clear why Ani never reported what happened to her. Honestly, it feels all too familiar. Ani was shamed and blamed for her assault which discouraged her from reporting. This part of the film touches on larger societal issues women face today: slut shaming, victim blaming and defending the rapist. It helps viewers understand what goes on in a victims head and how hard that decision to report can be.
The movie wraps with Ani ultimately choosing to tell her story. After confronting her only living rapist, Dean, played by Alex Barone, she finally feels confident enough to relay what happened to her. The scene where she confronts Dean is powerful and gives a sense of justice to Ani and the viewers alongside her.
The end of the movie is uplifting and overwhelmingly positive. Ani decides to publish her story in the New York Times and she finds a community of survivors as she realizes she is not alone in her trauma.
Kunis’ portrayal of Ani in this movie was truly next-level, the raw emotions in the aftermath of the rape felt authentic. I enjoyed the use of voice-over monologues throughout the movie as well. From the outside it looks like Ani simply has extreme anger issues, but through her voice-overs viewers gain an understanding of why she acts the way she does, and it is a very real portrayal of PTSD.
I wish this movie solely centered around the rape and the trauma of that, instead of also trying to incorporate the school shooting. School shooting victims have their own trauma completely separate and different to those who have experienced sexual assault. This movie would have been more powerful had it focused on one traumatic experience. It felt like the directors were juggling too many storylines instead of juggling one storyline really well.
This movie forces viewers to confront the realities of rape culture. Rape is an ugly facet of society and one that a lot of people want to keep hidden. Luckiest Girl Alive, brings it to the forefront and reveals all of its ugliness. This movie opens the conversation on rape and it exposes the reality of rape in a way that forces people to stop minimizing it.
In an interview with Today, Knoll said “I think I normalize what happened to me so that I can live with it. Then when you see it, you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s no rationalizing here. I don’t need to minimize this. This was really bad,” she said.
Everybody should watch this movie. Luckiest Girl Alive not only educates those who need to learn more about the reality of rape culture, it also validates the feelings and trauma that real survivors face.