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Wandering the streets, penniless young Maggie (Angela Sarafyan) finds a bit of assistance from stripper Esther (Bai) and her strip club's janitor, a young illegal immigrant named David (Jesse Garcia). David gives Maggie a place to crash in the garage he calls an apartment while she seeks out minimum wage jobs and heads to the library to look into GED courses.
Eventually David falls for the angry and tormented teen, but her proclivity for being beaten during sex suggests a very troubled past. Joining forces in a sort of you-and-me-against-the-world way, the two may find redemption as they navigate a minefield of immigration agents, drug dealers, scary landlords, and sex maniacs. Welcome to LA, kids.
A high number of really interesting actresses appear in odd cameo roles. Debi Mazar shows up as a spectacled librarian who tries to help Maggie. Dana Delaney turns up as Maggie's mother. And Rena Owen, unforgettable as the mother in New Zealand's Once Were Warriors, plays the strip club owner. What are these women doing here? It's a shock to see them.
Ultimately, the film rests on the shoulders of its two leads. Both are capable, but they have little with which to work. David doesn't say much, and Maggie goes from sullen to temper tantrum in an instant, punctuating her diatribes with repeated requests for David to 'Hit me! Hit me! Hit me!'
The fact that A Beautiful Life is based on a play called Jersey City may help explain why the story feels too small for its setting. Going from stage to screen is always tricky, and in this case, Maggie's intimate psychological drama is overshadowed by the ambience of the skid row streets, the nastiness of the strip club, and yes, Bai Ling on the pole. There's simply not enough for Maggie and David to do to sustain an entire movie.
