Viewers are, however, asking Netflix to give it a ‘trigger warning’
Trigger warning – article contains themes of sexual assault.
If you’ve taken to autumn like a duck to water – then you’re probably already snuggled up on your sofa, binge-watching this month’s best Netflix shows.
You’ll probably also already know that Mila Kunis’ new film, Luckiest Girl Alive, is riding high on the Netflix charts. But, what you may not know is that the film is actually partly based on a true story.
The actress, who is a mum to two with Aston Kutcher, plays Ani, a writer who works for a glossy New York magazine and is about to get married to her wealthy fiancé. However, there is something not quite right as she starts to have dark thoughts, which only get worse when she’s interviewed for a true crime documentary.
As it starts to unravel you realise that Ani is dealing with two traumatic events – being gang raped as a teenager during a house party, and witnessing a school shooting which was carried out by two of her friends, both of whom were bullied by the same boys that raped Ani. A very harrowing storyline, which is actually based on a true story.
The film works from a novel of the same name, and even though the writer Jessica Knoll said at the time that it was a work of fiction, she then went on to write an essay in Lena Dunham’s feminist newsletter that her character’s sexual assault, was, in fact, based on true life events.
Photo by Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty
Knoll told Today magazine after the essay: “I always feel a little undeserving of being called, like, brave or courageous, because I had to [open up] in fiction. There were these duelling things inside of me. I desperately craved the release of getting my story out on paper, and the validation of recognising what had happened to me as rape. I needed that.
“But on the other hand, I was frightened that people would read it and come to the same conclusion that people did when I was in high school, which was that no violation had occurred and that I had somehow participated in it.”
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