Girlfriends

1978's GIRLFRIENDS may have been relegated to the margins of feminist cinema, but to deny its influence would be positively myopic, an unfortunate oversight for students of the medium.  Greta Gerwig, current darling of indie girl power flicks, has acknowledged director Claudia Weill's slight but affecting drama as an inspiration for films like FRANCES HA.  I really liked that movie, and would have to agree.  There is a shared anxiety and crippling lack of self confidence in its heroines, young women daring to strike out in the Big Apple free of perhaps well meaning friends and relatives.  Finding their own identity.  Not entirely being defined by their relational appendages.

Such a moment occurs late in this movie.  Susan (Melanie Mayron) is arguing with her boyfriend Eric (Christopher Guest).  Their exchange is indicative of the intelligence of Vicki Polon's Woody Allenesque screenplay:

Eric: I don't like it when you're loud.

Susan: Well, I don't like you when you're not loud.  I don't know why I like you. 

Eric: Because you can tell me why you don't like me.

Susan: I like me when I don't need you.

Eric: I don't want you to need me.  I want you to want me.

Susan: There's no truth like bullshit. 

"I like me when I don't need you."   This may well be the key line in GIRLFRIENDS, a film that follows Susan after her roommate/best friend Anne (Anita Skinner) leaves to get married.  It feels like a death to Susan, and anyone who's been in her shoes can relate.  When folks get married, it is a bit like losing someone for good.  Susan becomes lost, seeking other relationships, even with a hitchhiker named Ceil (Amy Wright), who mistakes the gesture for something else.

Another key line in the film - "You haven't been alone in life for more than ten minutes!" This comes from Susan, directed at Anne.  By this point, our protagonist has suffered the loneliness and frustration of single life in spades. A wilderness which does include a gradual realization that one can be alone and fulfilled.  I thought of that friend who once told me she was aware of her "people addiction", needing to be around them every minute of the day to achieve self worth.  It's a widespread malady, in case you haven't noticed.  Maybe Anne hasn't.

Polon's script also considers Susan's (a photographer) professional frustrations.  She's barely making rent by shooting weddings and bar mitzvahs, but she has an eye, and does make a few outside sales.  Will her ineffectual manner hold her back from truly realizing her potential, like having her own opening at a gallery? Yes, life is a cliche, and as with Susan's relational dynamics, this story thread is treated familiarly but with some innovation and surprises.

Mayron is refreshingly unglamorous in the lead but never annoying or wallowing in self pity.   Her flowering is bumpy and at times uncertain but ultimately steady, and it's a joy to see such an unpretentious, natural independent movie about real people who don't always act like we think they should.  Watch the sides of the frame closely, at how the people in Susan's life react to her. 

GIRLFRIENDS, a valuable time capsule of the late 1970s and a favorite of Stanley Kubrick, is essentially a drama, but has plentiful humor and a few laugh out loud moments, as when the wife of the rabbi (Eli Wallach!) Susan works for asks her if she's ever been to a professional football game.  Susan shakes her head.

"Keep it that way."