Girlfriends

Golden lighting, lots of traveling shots and beautiful cinematography do not make up for a rather conventional and stereotypical treatment of women's issues in this interracial story of the friendship of two girls in pre-Civil Rights Louisiana. The white girl is the victim of her father's physical violence, and so, we learn in a later scene, she is destined to kill her abusive husband. The black girl is the victim of racial hatred when her act of speaking up against separate black and white drinking fountains at the train station inevitably leads to the lynching of her father. It's all kind of obvious and predictable and doesn't really break any new ground in the field of civil rights, women's issues, or the complexities of friendships. An American Film Institute production, it looks like it had lots of money and influence behind it, but is an immature production that ultimately fails to move the viewer beyond push button responses to serious issues dealt with more effectively in many other programs. Optional. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Ray)