Retro Review by Miranda Barnewall
The premise is fairly simple: Susan Weinblatt (Melanie Mayron) feels abandoned after her best friend, Anne Munroe (Anita Skinner), gets married. It's a situation familiar to many women, and increasingly so for myself. The happiness you feel for your friend is genuine, but still there is some feeling of abandonment. And it’s not just abandonment you feel – you begin to examine yourself and your own life. You wonder, “How is it that I am still here? What am I doing that’s wrong?” Here, meaning single, without a permanent job, and living alone. You feel left behind and like you are missing something, even if you aren’t sure marriage is what you want.
We get a sense of the closeness that defines Anne and Susan’s relationship from the first fifteen minutes of the film. We see it in the still photographs that accompany the film’s opening credits, as well as when Susan is reading over Anne’s shoulder despite Anee telling Susan to stop. They respect and love one another and would clearly do anything for the other. Both women are twenty-something starving artists, though there are some stark contrasts between them. Susan is a Jewish bespeckled photographer with wavy brown hair and a curvy figure, whereas Anne is (I believe) an Italian beauty with straight blonde hair and a slim figure.
Anne and Susan’s relationship is the film’s defining one. The rest of the relationships explored are meant as comparisons to that central relationship. There are the friendships Susan makes after Anne gets married, but there are also a few scenes that show Annie’s relationship with her husband Martin, played by Bob Balaban. It seems stilted and awkward in comparison to Anne and Susan’s. At times, it is also embarrassing to watch, especially when Susan is present.
For the rest of the film, Susan attempts to make new friendships and begin romantic relationships. After spending an awkward weekend out in the country with Anne and Martin, Susan picks up a female hitchhiker who eventually becomes Susan’s roommate. This peculiar, rebound roommate, Ceil, is clearly nothing like Anne. She looks much younger than Anne and Susan, and fails to pick up after herself; she leaves her stuff around the apartment, uses Susan’s developing pan for something else, and wears the dress Anne got Susan on her honeymoon. Susan eventually can’t take it anymore and asks Ceil to move out. Once she’s alone again, Susan finally unpacks her moving boxes and decorates the apartment.
Since Anne’s wedding, there are moments that communicate Susan’s feelings of loneliness and craving for a partner. One night in her new apartment watching her portable TV, Susan sees an interviewer ask a man where he likes to take his dates. (The answer, in case you’re wondering, is to John Ford movies.) Susan bursts into tears – tears brought about from a mix of fatigue, frustration, loneliness, confusion, and desire.
Despite selling a few photographs to some magazines, Susan still needs to accept bar mitzvah photography gigs to survive. Susan becomes closer with the married rabbi (played by Eli Wallach) and narrowly avoids having an affair with him. Anne voices her concern about the affair, but for Susan it’s just for some fun. Yet the almost-affair ends when the rabbi’s wife shows up at his office when Susan and the rabbi are supposed to get lunch.
And then there is Eric. After Anne gets married, Susan continuously tells people that she is just getting out of a relationship. When Susan goes to a party after Anne’s wedding, an age-appropriate man named Eric (played by Christopher Guest) immediately walks up to her and introduces himself. They end up sleeping together that night, but the one night stand for Susan is to fill the void she feels. She leaves that night and doesn’t see Eric again for a few months until he calls to ask her out. By that point, Susan has kicked out her roommate Ceil, unpacked her moving boxes, and has a show of her photographs booked at a gallery.
Eric is by no means perfect. The first night seeing her since her abrupt departure, Eric sits down at Susan’s table and eats the shrimp Susan bought for herself to eat in celebration of getting a show at a gallery. (Which, let me tell you – that boy would have been OUT of my apartment had that been me.) He backs out at the last minute on a plan scheduled for weeks so he can watch a football game. They laugh, argue, love, and their relationship eventually hits the point where Eric wants Susan to move in with him and give up her apartment. Whereas Susan before was unsure about living alone, she now sees her apartment as her solace. Their discussion ends in an argument; the following night Eric arrives at the gallery opening with a duckling in tow as an apology.
Susan and Anne’s friendship hits its roughest point when Susan shows up late (and without Eric) for dinner at Anne and Martin’s house. Throughout the film both women have hinted that the other is living the better life. Anne asks Susan what it’s like to live alone, mentioning she has never lived alone before. Susan sits on the couch uncomfortably while Anne and Martin show Susan slides of their honeymoon. Their fight brings out any suppressed feelings towards the other and how she lives her life. Anne tells Susan she is selfish, whereas Susan tells Anne she can’t be alone for ten minutes. Like her situation with Eric, Susan leaves on a bad note with Anne.
The film bookends with the opening when Susan drives out to the country house where Anne retreats after not showing up to Susan’s show. Anne reveals to Susan that she had an abortion. Alone, the two finally have a chance to reconcile things and catch up on their lives. One of the final shots of the film is a two shot of Anne and Susan, clearly having had a few shots of tequila, sitting on the couch in front of the fire, going back and forth saying, “Fuzzy, duck!”
Martin pulls into the driveway of the house, and as Anne gets up to greet him, the film ends on a freeze frame of Susan’s face. Will Susan move in with Eric? Will her show be a success? We don’t know, and Claudia Weill does not care; that’s not the point of the film. The central friendship is restored and wherever happens from there on out will be okay.
The film’s effectiveness is due to the nuanced gestures, the lines, and mise-en-scene. It’s very easy to see how this film could have fallen flat, but with Weill at the helm, after having worked on documentaries, knows how to get the most from the seemingly mundane. A quietness and comfort washes over you within the opening minutes of the film as you watch Susan take the boiled hot water from the stove and pour it into her mug. The bright, white walls decorated with a hodgepodge of assorted photographs and posters on the wall and books propped on a wooden plank set on top of a radiator. The creaking of the wood underneath Susan’s feet as she walks up to a receptionist’s desk at a gallery. It’s all so real.
I adore Girlfriends; the premise itself would hook me, but it's also executed very well. There is not enough art that realistically explores the tensions or breakups of female friendships. While Anne and Susan’s relationship survives at the end, the mini conflicts and struggles that occur throughout the film are a result of the drastic shift in their relationship. It's reassuring to see these conflicts play out on screen and to know this is something many women grapple with in their own lives.
Frances Ha clearly takes inspiration from Girlfriends. While I love Frances Ha, I revel in Girlfriends’s color palette, the film grain, and, at times, the slight unfocus of the camera. You can tell that this was a small, independent project. Director and producer Claudia Weill received the film’s initial funding from the American Film Institute (AFI) in the form of a $10,000 grant. Teaming up with screenwriter Viki Polon, the two created a thirty minute story of the two friends leading up to when Anne announces that she is getting married. Wanting to expand upon the premise to see what happens to Susan after Anne gets married, Weill received further funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Arts Council to complete the project. Warner Brothers eventually purchased the distribution rights.
Stanley Kubrick revealed that he loved Girlfriends and was surprised it did not receive more attention. In the last few years, Girlfriends has had a number of screenings at art house cinemas and was recently screened on TCM for the Women Make Film series. Its importance is unquestionable as well, as it was inducted into the National Film Registry last year.
Girlfriends has also received a Criterion restoration, supervised by Claudia Weill and the director of photography, Fred Murphy, set to be released, in fact, tomorrow. This revival is finally putting Girlfriends in the place it rightly deserves.