“Gone Girl”, Ben Affleck’s latest movie, has received a lot of positive acclaim. David Fincher managed to realize a very good thriller, where one cannot but express their appraisal for the psychological plot, which was very well built. The movie captured and explored those refined moments of introspection, doubt, restlessness, and those key aspects that contribute so well to shaping a character. And the characters in “Gone girl” were quite something.
The story revolves around the disappearance of Amy, Nick’s wife, a woman with a complex personality, who doesn’t seem to go for big compromises. At the beginning, Amy and Nick had the classic romantic love story, when two people meet and believe they have found their soul mate; and maybe they did. However, as years pass by, something goes wrong in their marriage, mostly because of the routine and, in addition to that, Nick starts cheating on Amy. Amy decides to teach him a lesson and she fakes her crime scene, trying to make the police believe it was Nick who killed her. Psychologically speaking, she really felt that he had almost taken all life out of her. After that, a lot of drama happens, until Amy shows up one day, pretending that she had been kidnapped by another guy whom she had dated. So, she returns to her husband and the two show some sort of sick affection towards each other.
The “Cool Girl”
At some point in the movie, where it is revealed that Amy had faked her crime scene, she is having a monologue about the “cool girl” that every man wishes in his life: “Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot; Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.”
This is about how sometimes, even though they do not suffer from physical pain or abuse, women do feel abused in a relationship, simply by trying to meet some standards. Trying to be “the cool girl” is tiring and the stress upon them will get to the point where they will eventually give up and reveal their real, egoistic and neglected side, along with many frustrations. The “Cool Girl” is also about how when in a relationship, we do not automatically reveal ourselves, we choose to be something that our partner would desire us to be, we are actually afraid of ourselves. It is about aspiring to be that one better person who would better suit the partner’s needs.
In conclusion, the “Cool girl” is an illusion, but it stays a symbol. It stands for the good and the bad in us. The good wants to be that somebody that one’s love would want one to be and the bad is the abuse of this side from the other person.