Luckiest Girl Alive

LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE on Netflix is the adaption of Jessica Knoll's novel, starring Mila Kunis in the all-important lead. Full Movie review >

Luckiest Girl Alive centers on Ani FaNelli, a sharp-tongued New Yorker who appears to have it all: a sought-after position at a glossy magazine, a killer wardrobe, and a dream Nantucket wedding on the horizon. Jessica Knoll wrote the screenplay for Luckiest Girl Alive which is based on her own novel. Mercedes](https://www.heavenofhorror.com/tv/mr-mercedes-renewed-season-2/)), Scoot McNairy ( [True Detective](https://www.heavenofhorror.com/reviews/true-detective-season-3-hbo/)), and the always amazing Jennifer Beals (The Book of Boba Fett). In recent years, he’s worked mostly in TV, where he has directed on everything from The Handmaid’s Tale (12 episodes across three seasons), Broadchurch, and most recently For many reasons, but especially in terms of listening to and seeing young people. Either from knowing similar trauma or the fear of experiencing the same thing. The realism of the story told in Luckiest Girl Alive – from the school shooting to the sexual assault – makes it a very important movie. Mila Kunis is fierce and credible and absolutely steals the show. Mark my words, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Chiara Aurelia in the future. Actually, she was also in [Mike Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game](https://www.heavenofhorror.com/reviews/geralds-game-netflix-2017/), so I keep hoping we’ll see her in one of his Netflix series sometimes soon. Continue reading our Luckiest Girl Alive movie review below. Read our full Luckiest Girl Alive movie review here!

Despite the undeniable power of Jessica Knoll's semi-autobiographical story, its translation to film needs more cinematic structure.

In a weird quirk of timing, this marks the second movie this week featuring Scoot McNairy as a kindly teacher, the other being Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. When a documentary filmmaker seeks out her side of the story, baiting her with the indication that Dean is going to speak on the record as well, the second timeline begins to unfold. Aurelia, who previously played a younger Carla Gugino in Gerald’s Game, is the real star here, acting out the inner trauma Ani has tried to forget. Rewinding the clock to her high school years, shortly before the massacre, younger Tifani’s story sets up a mystery: Who among these teens is the shooter, and is Tifani in any way also culpable? The structure of those events, however, remains better suited to a novel than a movie, as two timelines play out simultaneously in a voiceover-heavy story mostly told from inside the protagonist’s head. “I’m not getting married until we have a woman for president,” says Ani’s best friend in response to the latter’s impending nuptials to a perfect, old-money inheriting lacrosse champion named Luke (Finn Wittrock).

Kunis plays Ani FaNelli, a have-it-all magazine journalist close to landing her dream job at the New York Times and marrying her wealthy boyfriend Luke (Finn ...

But “Luckiest Girl Alive” falls short of its promise, a reminder that, however ironic the title is intended to be, fortune tends to favor the bold. As constructed, unfortunately, in an adaptation of the book written by its author, Jessica Knoll, and directed by Mike Barker, “Luckiest Girl Alive” feels as if it’s juggling too many plates – joining the story in progress and laboring to connect the mass shooting to Ani’s story in a way that muddles the mystery. [Mila Kunis](https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/world/mila-kunis-stand-with-ukraine-cnnheroes/index.html) produces and stars in this #MeToo-tinged story, which awkwardly incorporates a mass school shooting as well as gender and class politics into what becomes an ungainly mix of hot-button issues in one dramatic package.

Luckiest Girl Alive not only dramatizes a school shooting in poor taste, it has the gall to use one as the backdrop while it also exploits rape trauma in ...

Ordinarily this moment in a film would feel triumphant, but it’s here you realize “Luckiest Girl Alive” has exploited both school shootings and rape trauma for a self-actualization narrative that ultimately ends with Ani finding value not in the release of her repressed emotions through this writing, but in the shallow achievement of viral fame. Through flashbacks and Ani’s narration (which is haphazardly deployed throughout as her cynical inner thoughts, an interview for a documentary, and the copy for a piece she writes during the film’s denouement), we learn that one of the survivors, now a gun reform activist, claims that Ani was in on the shooting—but also that this same survivor was one of three classmates who gang-raped Ani at a school dance after party just weeks before the shooting. Ani’s wedding dress is from Saks 5th Avenue (the one on 5th Avenue!), but she makes it clear to her rich friends that her mother shops at T.J. [Chiara Aurelia](/cast-and-crew/chiara-aurelia)), is a survivor of the “deadliest private school shooting in U.S. [Mike Barker](/cast-and-crew/mike-barker)’s brutal blocking of the rape sequence, Aurelia does a fine job in showing Ani’s pain and resistance during, confusion immediately after, and later hesitation to report due to internalized shame. She’s written “1,500 stories about how to give a blow job” but all she really wants is a job at the New York Times Magazine so she can be “someone people can respect.” Ani is engaged to an old money scion named Luke ( [Finn Wittrock](/cast-and-crew/finn-wittrock), given nothing to do), who is more of a box to check towards Ani’s goal of unquestionable social legitimacy than anything else.

Based on the eponymous novel by Jessica Knoll, here's your guide to the top Luckiest Girl Alive Filming Locations in New York and Toronto.

Trafalgar Castle School in Whitby was used to stand in for the exterior of Brentley School. Filming took place at several spots on the island, including North Ferry Terminal and a private property in Greenport Village. 5th Avenue was also the first exterior scene to be shown in the movie, where Ani and her Fiancé take a stroll down the street after picking out the gifts for their wedding registry. Bay Street gives a New York City vibe and is one of the many outdoor locations that is used to represent Manhattan in the movie. Ani also works in midtown Manhattan as this is where the magazine who she works for’s office is based. In the background, you can see a Bryant Park News Stand before they descend into the subway system.

Luckiest Girl Alive full tracklist from the Netflix movie starring Mila Kunis, including brand new song I Know Where I've Been by Elle King and Linda Perry.

For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the [Radio Times podcast](https://www.radiotimes.com/podcasts/) with Jane Garvey. [Sign up for Netflix from £6.99 a month](https://www.netflix.com/gb/). The song playing during Luckiest Girl Alive's closing credits is I Know Where I've Been, a brand new song written especially for the movie. - “Pump Up the Volume” by M/A/R/R/S - “Feel So Good” by Mase - “Paradiso” by Charlotte Gainsbourg - “Put It in Your Mouth” by Akinyele feat. - “Awake” by Generationals You can see the full tracklist below: - “I Think I’m Paranoid” by Garbage - “Sunny” by Blake Swann - “Bossa Nova U.S.A.” by Dave Brubeck Quartet

Netflix's "Luckiest Girl Alive" stars Mila Kunis as Ani and Chiara Aurelia as her younger self, an adaptation of the book by Jessica Knoll.

A lot of women and people everywhere are dealing with kind of some of the issues and topics that we touched on in the movie. Part of the reason I wanted to work on this project is that every single person involved is truly incredible and amazing at what they do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission from the sale. For the first and second days, we worked through the shooting sequence and then we moved on to working on the sexual assault scenes on the third and fourth days. They spent a lot of time having all the kids connect as well and get to know one another. I met with Mike Barker, who’s the director and I was slowly falling in love with the project. A couple of days later, I get a call from my agent and my manager and they’re like, “Hey, so turns out they’re actually canceling your audition.” I said, “What? So anyway, I auditioned, I read the script and I loved it. “I think that I probably belonged in a generation that didn’t have social media.” In her new film, she gets to be. [Netflix](https://stylecaster.com/how-to-change-netflix-region/)’s Luckiest Girl Alive, which is based on the [2015 bestselling book](https://www.amazon.com/Luckiest-Girl-Alive-Jessica-Knoll-ebook/dp/B00UBL1EEE/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?asc_source=web&asc_campaign=web&asc_refurl=https%3A%2F%2Fstylecaster.com%2Fluckiest-girl-alive%2F#038;tag=stylecaster0d-20) of the same name by Jessica Knoll. As an up-and-coming actor with 22 credits already to her name, including Cruel Summer and Tell Me Your Secrets, Aurelia laments the pressure she feels to “have an “I love this song!” she exclaims on the set of her photoshoot with StyleCaster in late September.

When Jessica Knoll penned her 2015 debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, she never imagined that it would lead to a major Netflix movie starring Mila Kunis—or to ...

Women are invested in male-dominated stories like Mad Men and The Sopranos—and it would be really cool if men were invested in this story in that same way. It wasn’t about the #MeToo movement; it was about what happened to me in the wake of publishing my essay. For the movie, I wanted to use a bit of humor to show how I felt then. I haven’t experienced that stage to get to the point where I would call myself a survivor. In the movie, Ani is asked if she prefers to be called a survivor or a victim. I don’t think the idea that Ani is so afraid to come out with her story would have landed in our society today. A lot of victims and survivors do that; it’s the mind’s way of accepting the level of violation and violence that was inflicted on you. But at the same time, I know that this was a crime—and it was not treated like one. I don’t feel like I have that much in common with the version of myself that wrote the book, or even the essay. It’s the power of knowledge and understanding how this affected me and how I can shift my behavior in positive ways. I thought I had a sense of jadedness about it, almost—I’ve written and talked about it before, and it didn’t make me that uncomfortable. “We really needed to get it right so that people would understand the depths of Ani’s rage,” says Knoll.

"Luckiest Girl Alive" revolves around the perfect life of Ani Fanelli, a writer at a popular women's magazine, engaged to a loving, preppie, financially.

The weight of the past was lifted from her shoulders, and she was free from the guilt that consumed her. Ani knew that she was on financial aid and that her life could go astray if she spoke about the gang rape. Her mother got her a lawyer when she was in school and silenced her before she could ever confide in her what had happened that night. She decided she wanted to be that woman in life, and she went to extremes to be her. Her mother had dedicated her life and money to her daughter’s education, and the fact that she attended a party and consumed alcohol, putting in line all that her mother had sacrificed, would make her furious. Instead, she even apologized to Liam, who was disappointed to learn that Ani was calling the events of the night gang rape. He took her to his residency and requested that she inform her mother, but she refused. When she saw Dean enter the room, she tried to make some excuse to leave, but he held her down and raped her. After Peyton left, Ani managed to stand up and tried to walk, but the boys would not let her escape. She had passed out, and when she came to her senses, she remembered her classmate Peyton making out with her. She was lying on the bathroom floor, unable to stop what was being done to her body. Everything around her was, in a way, pushing her to the edge.

Since the release of Luckiest Girl Alive, Mila Kunis has received positive reviews. The book's author and the film's screenwriter is Jessica Knoll.

The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). The movie's ending will leave anyone with nagging questions, but do we really need to get a second part? Her acting is captivating, and the audience will love it. The movie will probably follow the same path. [Jessica Knoll](/topic/jessica-knoll)is the book's author and the movie's screenwriter. Will we see more of Mila Kunis in this one-of-a-kind role?