On the surface, Claudia Weill’s low-budget 1978 indie film Girlfriends tells the story of a friendship between two roommates who aspire to be artists: Susan Weinblatt (Melanie Mayron) photographs bar mitzvahs but also shoots intimate photos and dreams of one day having a gallery showing, while Anne Munroe (Anita Skinner) writes poetry and struggles to find time to work on a novel. One might expect this setup to be ripe for rom-com shenanigans, but Girlfriends is not that kind of film. Men do appear—Eric (Christopher Guest) as a potential boyfriend for Susan, and Martin (Bob Balaban) as the man Anne marries—but the comedy is decidedly subdued and the narrative remains very much focused on the women’s friendship as each pursues a different path while also striving to hold on to a sense of independence.
Girlfriends is very much a film of its time (the look and milieu is decidedly late ‘70s New York City) when the patriarchal order was being questioned and women were demanding equal rights, but its central theme—defining one's self while navigating the rocky shoals of relationships—is timeless and presented with a searching honesty.
Sidebar: an excellent companion piece is Criterion’s recent release of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s 1979 film Town Bloody Hall, in which pugnacious author Norman Mailer squares off against feminists including Germaine Greer in a vibrant debate about women’s liberation.
Presented with a 4K digital restoration of the original 16mm film, extras on Girlfriends include interviews (with Weill, Mayron, Guest, Balaban, screenwriter Vicki Polon, and writer and director Joey Soloway), Weill and Joyce Chopra’s 1972 short film “Joyce at 34,” Weill’s 1973 short film “Commuters,” and a booklet with essays by critic Molly Haskell and scholar Carol Gilligan. Recommended.