Girlfriends (1978)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Very disappointing...

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I came across Girlfriends after reading a list of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films, and he rightly called it 'wonderful'. Shot in New York in the late 70's, when master filmmakers such as Cassavetes, Scorsese and Woody Allen ruled the cities screens Weill's film went largely ignored and her brilliant lead actress never went on to make another film except for a small role in a B sci-fi thriller. There is an obvious kinship between Weill's style and that of Woody Allen - the nervous Jewish humor, the wit and sharp dialog, but Girlfriends omits the irony and stands on its own as a singular, intelligent story of friendship and troubled relationships told from a uniquely female perspective. Sadly it is very hard to see this film today, No streaming service carries it, and Kim's New York just shut its doors for good. I bought a poor transfer on DVD. I hope Criterion gets around to it one day, because it is truly a wonderful film.

Well-done and engrossing drama of a woman (played by Melanie Mayron) who's living with her best friend. Her best friend decides to get married and move out. It devastates Mayron and she goes on a journey of self-discovery...and trying to find a new roommate.This was a big hit in 1978. It played the art house circuit for quite a while. I saw it when I was 16. Being a guy, I wasn't sure I would like it but I was fascinated. The characters were complex, the story absorbing and showed me what NYC was like (back in 1978). After it died down it disappeared completely. There was a showing on cable back in the early 1980s but that was it. I've asked a few friends who are film fanatics (like me) if they knew about this and none of them had even heard of it! That's too bad. This is a wonderful film for anybody--you don't have to be a woman to understand the loneliness and shock Mayron feels when her best friend leaves. Also it has some casual nudity which was surprising for a PG film. It also has Christopher Guest in an early role (and doing a nude scene--not much is shown).An excellent film. It is available on DVD. The DVD transfer may look grainy but the film always looked like that, It was VERY low-budget.

This movie set in 1978, is a wonderful analysis of women's relationships with their friends and how relationships with men can change their relationships with each other. It is subtle and nuanced and emblematic of the independent films of the 1970's.Claudia Weill was a women who tried to get into that very exclusive circle of directors which are very male. When this movie was made it was considered to be the first of many such independent films by women to try to climb that fortress.The acting of Amy Wright and Melanie Mayron at the time felt like it wasn't acting at all. Since they were both unknowns, you felt like you were snooping into someone's personal lives rather than watching two actresses go through a script.

In "Girlfriends," first-time writer-director Claudia Weill created a compelling depiction of a woman look at a woman growing, awkwardly and not without pain, into her adult life--that is, the life of an independent woman and artist in New York City. This film also offers what is inarguably one of cinema's most honest and insightful looks at the complex bonds between women, detailing with extraordinary sensitivity (and bits of quirky humor) the shifts, both small and seismic, that occur when one of the halves of a sustaining heterosexual female friendship effectively "leaves" to get married. The cinema verite quality one finds here may be in part a reflection of the tight budget and inexperience of a novice filmmaker, but it also gives the film an utterly compelling texture, something of the raw, uneven fabric of real life. Melanie Mayron (later "Melissa" on the ABC-TV series "ThirtySomething") gives an earnest, convincing, and touching portrayal of budding photographer Susan Weinblatt, a twenty-something woman learning to find her balance, to be true to herself, navigate a welter of complicated relationships, to deal with both loneliness and intimacy, and to come into her own as an artist. The film includes wonderful turns by Eli Wallach, playing the rabbi who oversees the bar mitzvahs Susan photo, and Viveca Lindfors as a New York gallery owner.