FEATURE FILM

An intimate, lyrical approach fits The Good Girl

	Enrique Chediak on the set of The Good Girl. (PHOTO: DALE ROBINETTE)

The Good Girl is the latest film from the director-writer team of Miguel Arteta and Mike White. Their previous collaboration was the sleeper hit Chuck and Buck. The Good Girl is the story of a woman, played by Jennifer Aniston, who brings trouble to everyone around her. She is bored with her life, which consists mainly of working at the cosmetic counter at a discount store and putting up with her dopey husband. Eventually she begins a passionate adulterous affair with a borderline psycho.

"It's like Madame Bovary meets Raising Arizona," says Arteta. "There are many weird comic twists. It has suspense, tragedy and a strong dose of absurdity."

Arteta and cinematographer Enrique Chediak wanted a distinctive, gritty, hard-hitting look for the film. For inspiration, they looked at a number of films from the 70s including The Sugarland Express and Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, as well as the more recent Buffalo 66.

"I knew it was going to be an intimate look," says Arteta. "That word became a mandate. It's about bringing the audience into this woman's state of mind, when she starts doing a lot of crazy things. I also wanted the film to have a very distinctive look in order to set it apart from other movies that Jennifer Aniston has done. She'd done a lot of romantic comedies. Part of the charm of this movie is that it's about people who seem quite ordinary on the surface."

Arteta and Chediak considered using reversal film stocks to help create their unique look. They spoke with cinematographer Lance Acord, who had success with reversal film on Buffalo 66. After a battery of tests, Chediak concluded that rating the Kodak Vision 320T film 5277 at an exposure index of 1000 and "pushing", created the "intimate" feeling they wanted.

"In the production design, we tried to avoid greens as much as possible, and worked for blues and browns," says Arteta. "She has a life in the store where she works, and has another life when she comes home to her husband. We tried to contrast those looks. In the store, it was a little colder with a touch of warmth. Her house was a little warmer with some cold tones to it. Enrique tested for the colors to see how pushing the film two stops affected them. The intense colors took a weird curve, while skin tones maintained their tone."

In the lyrical voice-over sequences, the camera moves gracefully on cranes and dollies.

For the most part, the movement and composition was kept simple.

"Because the film is shot very simply, we wanted something to give it a little bit of a personality," he says. "With the (Kodak) Vision 320(T) film rated at 1000 ASA and pushed two stops, we liked the grain and the milkiness of the blacks. It affected the colors in an interesting way."

Chediak's credits include Songcatcher, Boiler Room, 3 AM, and The Faculty. In 1997 Chediak won the cinematography award at the Sundance Film Festival for Hurricane Streets.

"By underexposing and pushing the film, we created a lot of grain, which does interesting things to the image," he explains. "In a way, the grain acts as a filter because there's so much of it, the images are less sharp. The blacks lose sharpness as well. That's part of our visual design."

Arteta's breakthrough film, Star Maps, was produced in 35mm film format and Chuck and Buck was a digital video production.

"I knew from reading the script that The Good Girl should be on film," he says. "Jennifer's character's voiceovers have a lyrical feel. The sharpness and depth of field that you get from film lets you build a sense of portrait. Video seems to condense things into one plane, whereas a film image can give you much more of a sense of depth. The dimension will bring out a sense of poetry and open up the world. I enjoyed working digitally but it has its limitations. You have to have the right story for it. Chuck and Buck was structured as a video diary. This movie has much more scope, and it was clear that film was the better choice."