Very Good Girls

Very Good Girls, a 2013 film directed by Naomi Foner, is a noble misfire. The nobility lies in that it is a fairly honest film about young women and their sexuality. The problem is, though it's about girls, they spend the whole movie thinking about the male gender.

Lily (Dakota Fanning) and Gerry (Elizabeth Olsen) have been friends forever. They are now in the summer before college and, amazingly, they are still virgins. They decide they will lose it before going off to college.

One day at the beach they meet an enigmatic ice cream salesman (Boyd Holbrook). Olsen is immediately attracted to him, and becomes kind of obsessed by him. But Holbrook seeks out Fanning, and the two have a sexual affair, without Olsen knowing about it.

There are subplots involving the girls' families, with some heavyweight casting that is pretty much wasted--Fanning's parents are Ellen Barkin and Clark Gregg, and Olsen's are Demi Moore and Richard Dreyfuss. I don't know why you get Demi Moore to be in a movie and have only about two lines--maybe she lost a bet.

Olsen, though too old to play an eighteen-year-old, is terrrific, but Fanning doesn't do herself any favors here. She goes through the film as if on sedatives. I can 't tell you one thing about her personality, or why Holbrook would be enchanted by her. She is sexually harassed by her boss, Peter Sarsgaard, who pretty much is the go-to guy for creepy older man/younger woman scenarios.

Also, I believe this film, with all the women in it, fails the Bechdel test, in that the girls do have conversations together, but it's almost always about sex or boys. I may have missed where they talk about something else, but it's rare. The implication is that a girl of 18 doesn't think about anything else, and that's a shame.