film fatales #29: girlfriends (claudia weill, 1978)

In some ways, a perfect Film Fatale selection. Low budget, directed, written, and edited by women, the story of a 20-something photographer and her relationships, mostly with her women friends.

Girlfriends could be remade with Greta Gerwig and released today, and it would fit right in. Low budget, charismatic lead performance, character-driven. More than one writer has noted the similarities between Girlfriends and Frances Ha. Katherine Maheux called it "the best movie Noah Baumbach never made". And then there's the TV series Girls. Lena Dunham has admitted the influence:

[T]his movie feels like my oldest influence, yet I saw it for the first time less than a year ago. I was dragged (because I was tired, not skeptical) to a screening at 92Y by a friend well versed in lost classics who said this was truly my kind of movie. And she was right—from the first shot, I was transfixed. By the complex relationships, the subtlety, the odd comedy that was awkward long before awkward was cool. It was the 1970s of my mother’s youth, which I discuss in Tiny Furniture through her journal entries. Claudia was at the screening for a Q&A, and I found her stories and general manner (tough but sensitive; third woman admitted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; great effortless hair) really transfixing.

It's interesting that a film which feels very much of its time would have such resonance 40 years down the road, not for the evocative presentation of the late-70s, but because it feels fresh like the 2010s.

Weill and star Melanie Mayron have had careers based more in television than in movies. Weill, who also works in the theater, directed It's My Turn in 1980, and then moved to TV, where she worked on everything from Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life to the (perhaps inevitable) episode of Girls. Mayron is probably best-known for the four seasons she appeared on Thirtysomething, but she also moved on to directing for television (her IMDB page lists 50 different series she has worked on). She is especially busy on Jane the Virgin, where she has directed 11 episodes while appearing in ten of them as Jane's writing instructor.

You won't hear me complaining about the value of TV work over movies. Still, it would have been nice for Weill to get more opportunities to create features. But it's good that newer talents like Lena Dunham and Greta Gerwig are able to credit Girlfriends as an important marker for their own work. 8/10.

(Explanation of the Film Fatales Series.)