Luckiest Girl Alive

The key to Ani Fanelli’s character is her studied attempt across more than a decade to avoid establishing a consistent, readable character. This pliant and negotiated sense of identities, which she calls “reinvention,” is in turn suggested by the plethora of names, more like aliases, she goes by with chameleon ease. The impact of two traumas, the gangrape and then, weeks later, the school shooting in which she kills her only friend, lead her to a pattern of reinventing herself, of eluding definition, and of being what others want her to be.

For Ani, character is a flexible, malleable thing. She is able to play the confident, empowered woman at the workplace, ironically known for writing confident advice columns designed to inspire women of her age to assert the integrity of their identity. With her handsome and successful fiancé, she plays the dutiful wife-to-be even though she chafes against his blithe and decidedly outdated assumptions that marriage means kowtowing to his career and providing him with heirs. With Andrew, she hints at the genuine impact her rape and the shootings had on her before turning on him and unleashing a tirade of hurtful accusations that rightfully dismiss his interest in her well-being.