Lilli Keeve
Initially a short film, Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’s Good Girl Jane is her feature debut. The intense drama is a realistic snapshot of a teenage girl falling into addiction and falling in love. Set in 2005, the movie is based on events from Mintz’s life and does not shy away from the difficult subject matter that youth face and the pressures from their peers to which they succumb. Mintz found her muse in the magnetic and tremendously gifted Rain Spencer for the role of Jane—a depressed, ordinary girl who isolates herself from everyone and everything until she meets a charming drug dealer Jamie (Patrick Gibson). Jane’s insular existence becomes exciting and liberating as she simultaneously is put under his alluring spell and catapulted into a sinister world.
The movie’s beating heart is the electrifying chemistry between Spencer and Gibson. After their paths collide at a party, they instantly have a connection and Jane loses herself in him, while also getting involved with drugs and a rebellious crowd. The film adeptly chronicles Jane’s intensely vulnerable feelings of first love and loss, while wrestling with identity and the struggles of being a girl. With palpable intensity, creative camera movements, and compelling performances from Spencer and Gibson, Good Girl Jane marks an impressive foray into feature film directing and writing for Mintz.
Mintz and cinematographer Jake Saner immediately place us in Jane’s world (and her shoes). From the beginning, the camera follows her as she walks around school listening to music or on the computer in her dimly lit, poster-clad room. In terms of the visual atmosphere, the color palettes change from monotone to colorful signifying Jane before meeting Jamie and after. In a stunning scene when Jane and Jamie are playfully swirling around each other in a pool there’s a distinct pinkish hue conveying the lovestruck giddiness that she feels at that moment.
The notable use of wide shots visually and symbolically illustrates the separation of Jane’s presence from her surrounding environment. She is the new girl at school and intentionally shuts herself out from the world – she doesn’t quite fit in with her peers and is an outsider even in her own home. As a child of divorce, her relationship with her mom (Andie MacDowell) and sister (Eloisa Huggins) is strained, and she rarely sees her dad. Jane is aimless and feels like a waste of space until she finds a pack of wild, carefree friends who accept her for who she is. She can be her true self for the first time without being judged or bullied.
One of the most stand-out elements of Mintz’s film is the authenticity of the performances, emotions, and overall world presented on screen. The lack of a prominent score is an effective choice (all the music is diegetic) which further adds to the moody, grounded, and bleak realism. Rain Spencer (who was around 19 or 20 at the time of filming) had an immediate connection to the character of Jane, noting in an interview, that she “saw certain aspects of her teenage self” in the role. In every way, she sensitively encapsulates the alienation of being a teenage girl trying to discover herself while becoming infatuated with an older man and numbing her pain with hard drugs. Jane’s attempts to get sober are thwarted, even her sister and mom try to help but nothing works. She craves the ecstasy of escape and, much like her toxic relationship with Jamie, is reluctant to separate herself from this newfound—yet destructive—freedom.
In terms of character, despite Jamie’s manipulative tendencies and coercion of Jane, Mintz manages to make him human and, at times, tender. While he does indeed develop deep feelings for Jane and recognizes something special in her, he takes advantage of her youthful eagerness. He is complex and understands things about the world that Jane has yet to know. When she is exposed to the disturbing sight of Jamie dealing drugs to a mom with kids, she becomes terrified and wants to leave. Her innocence is stolen in minutes, and nothing could have prepared her for what she witnessed. Similarly, losing her virginity to Jamie in the backseat of his car perpetuates the tight hold he has over her, and the inherent imbalance of power is hard to stomach. Jane navigates the harsh realities of the world and the fraught perils of falling in love with the wrong person.
Mintz and her team deliver a bold yet artistic fragility evident in the invigorating cinematography, purposeful editing, and intriguing character development. Spencer and Gibson are magical together, and, paired with Mintz’s intuition as a screenwriter and director, Good Girl Jane cements itself as a heartbreaking and dazzling piece of narrative indie work that isn’t afraid to reveal the coexisting ugly and beautiful sides of life.
