Film Fatale: Girlfriends and On Screen Female Friendship

Girlfriends (1978) directed by Claudia Weill is a film about the complexities of female friendship through the 16mm grain and the romantic filthiness of New York City. It’s a rarity to find such a film, one that reaches that realistic feeling of how women live, both together and alone. To be young and tired in the city but still that small flame of inspiration, passion and love lingers even when the electricity is cut off and your best friend becomes a yuppie. The film has become a household name of low budget, independent American filmmaking. Weill, an already up and coming documentary filmmaker, used friends, bargaining and intrinsic editing to jump over the financial obstacles and managed to make a New York Classic with $500,000.

Susan Weinbatt is an aspiring photographer, paying rent by taking photographs at Bat Mitzvahs and she’s left to live alone after her best friend and roommate, Anne, gets married. Before Anne moves out, the film offers us such a natural and unique look into women living together. Susan is trying to get ready for work and Anne is stressing over her writing. They butt heads not because they don’t love each other but their struggling careers, lack of space, money and romance puts a strain on the friendship. And once Anne leaves, Susan must face a modern type of loneliness. Missing half the rent payment and attending parties alone, it’s a bitter kind of grieving that takes place during a friend-breakup.

Susan is a special character, coming to terms with the idea of being alone whilst chaining cigarettes and having a charming presence that introduces a self-awareness to the film, a type of protagonist that doesn’t chase away a wider audience but rather brings them in with relatability and unpretentiousness. Director Claudia Weill explained her desire to create a narrative story for the ‘sidekick’, the woman who doesn’t meet the visual standards of the bombshell blonde and must entertain a life that is, to some, subpar. As Weill said during an interview, the film is about ‘A person who doesn’t get married right away, the person who is not living the dream life, the person who’s having to create a life for themselves. I wanted to see somebody like me in a movie.’ And that’s exactly what Weill did for all the ladies living in a crumbling city and a dream that just isn’t seeming to cross over into reality.

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“When voyeurism takes the back seat, we’re able to have a breath of fresh air and celebrate the simplicities we all feel but never see, the vulnerability of loneliness.”

This film has aged fantastically well. It portrays a humanness that is repeated through every generation, whether it’s ‘78 or 2012. It has that mumblecore quality which feels like a warm hug, a ‘oh my god, I’ve never seen something I feel so often on a television screen before, that means I’m not completely hopeless’. This type of feeling hits a little harder when it’s surrounding female relationships too. When voyeurism takes the back seat, we’re able to have a breath of fresh air and celebrate the simplicities we all feel but never see, the vulnerability of loneliness. A scene as simple as being slumped over on the sofa, softly crying.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Susan is recording her voice mail greeting, she gives a quirky little statement at the end, ‘today’s fruit is the plum’, she holds the telephone and has an imaginary conversation, ‘didn’t I tell you, I’m doing this whole page spread for Vogue?’, and then the electricity shuts off. As the lights fade to black and the music comes to a halt, she stops in her tracks. ‘I hate it, I hate it!’ She screams in the darkness. She didn’t think things could get worse, but they did. But ‘worse’ is not too worse. The film is aware that the things Susan is going through are painful, but normal. They’re not detrimental. And it reminds the audience of this too with the humour and the moments of tenderness. It makes you feel okay about working several jobs and not being able to pay the bills on time.

The end of the film supports this notion that things can be okay again. As Anne calls over her husband, Susan smiles. She looks at ease, a big contrast to the anxiety she blurted out as soon as Anne told her about him at the beginning of the film. Susan has gotten through the idea of being alone, and she’s also gotten a photography exhibition, and she’s still in the crumbling environment but this taste of ease and calm is a reminder that it can be done, and things may be okay. 

Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum