The Criterion Channel
By Andrea Thompson
For our latest entry in films that were ahead of their time, we have Claudia Weill’s 1978 gem “Girlfriends.” In a sense at least. Any film that takes place in New York City during this particular era (or really any time before the early 2000s) is going to be a time capsule, and “Girlfriends” is very much that, with the quickest communication happening not just through landline (!) phones, but without any kind of voicemail or answering machine.
Plodding through this now strange and alien landscape is Susan Weinblatt (Melanie Mayron), an aspiring photographer who happily resides with her best friend and roommate Anne (Anne Munroe), an aspiring writer. At least, until Anne moves out to get married, leaving Susan feeling alone and betrayed.
As the title promises, Susan and Anne’s close, intense, and rather symbiotic relationship is the film’s heart. It’s also the common thread in what is more accurately described as a series of episodes as Susan struggles to pay the bills and make a living as a photographer.
That less than cohesive narrative works though, and to watch “Girlfriends” is to see a forerunner to the great pop culture womances, the most obvious being “Sex in the City” and Lena Dunham’s “Girls.” Its true heir, however, might just be the 2012 film “Frances Ha,” which saw the title character, played by Greta Gerwig, similarly flailing personally and professionally after her best friend marries.
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And flail Susan does, screaming aloud out of sheer loneliness in her apartment, contemplating a relationship with an older, very married rabbi (who also has a son), and just dealing with the everyday sexism that includes a creepy cab driver, condescending men who have something to mansplain to her about her photos, and devastatingly, her own self-destructive tendencies that harm both Anne and Susan’s relationship with her boyfriend Eric (Christopher Guest).
The wedge between Susan and Anne is especially devastating though, and reflective of the starkly divergent, limited crossroads many women faced at the time-the often devastatingly lonely path of the independent career woman or losing themselves in marriage and motherhood. The growing distance between Susan and Anne reflects that dichotomy, with the former envying Anne’s stability and home, and the latter resentful of Susan’s independence and freedom.
A bond like theirs may fray, but we all know it can’t be completely dissolved. When the two reconcile, as we know they will and must, it’s through the quiet familiarity of inside jokes and simply how they share space with each other, which wordlessly conveys the strength and deeply loving nature of a bond born of years of shared experiences.
When they are interrupted by the arrival of Susan’s husband, theirs is a shared look that speaks of a spell being broken. But just as Gerwig is able to gaze across the room at her platonic love and say, “She’s my best friend,” Susan and Anne have found their person again, and it’ll always be each other.
