Girlfriends, 1978.
Claudia Weill’s film has been with me for a long time. Back in the day, I was as excited by it somehow being made by a person named Claudia as by what was happening on the screen. I can’t recall when I first saw it, it’s just always been there to think about, use in a classroom, turn a friend on to, and, more recently, rewatch on Criterion whenever the spirit moves me.
Girlfriendsis a film about being young, making mistakes, learning along the way. A door closes, another cracks open. It’s about a time when you first become aware of your own tenacity, the loneliness of living alone, the excellence of living alone, a friend jumps ship and gets married—and how that upsets the absoluteness of your own choices. Out of cash until the next thing comes along, the lights get turned off, a spacey hitchhiker girl shows up, the next thing does come along. Disappointment with your married-man romance, joy over a fantastic photo, being single, having a solid friendship with someone who knows-knows you. Making yourself laugh when no one else is around.
The day-to-day life of Susan (Melanie Mayron), a young woman in New York City trying to get a toehold in the art world, addresses the thrills, ambitions, and obstacles that any young, wannabe artist can relate to: Having a show in a small gallery that your friends show up for. Or making a rookie mistake—like blowing off the installation of the show you fought so hard to get.
Among all the various ways I think about this film, and have thought about it over the years, I’ve never considered Girlfriendsparticularly political. I’m so in the rhythms of Susan’s experience, I barely remember that there’s an abortion in the final act. But because I’m returning to the film now—as Roe gets flushed down the toilet, like an awful miscarriage (of justice!), errrrrrr—suddenly it feels completely radical.
Up at Bard College, where I’m an artist-in-residence, I often program films that show students the limits and struggles women faced in prior generations: Susan Hayward in Nic Ray’s The Lusty Men, drying a plate in the kitchen doorway as the men amble out to the porch for some fresh air and freedom.
Next semester, when I screen Girlfriends, it will be in an entirely different context. I’ll have to offer my audience of twenty-year-olds a trigger warning that this 1978 film depicts choices no longer available to them.
Girlfriends is all about possibilities—the chance to find yourself or make yourself up, make mistakes, change your mind, fall in love with your rabbi, and walk around the city at night with the roar of the subway under your feet. A true relic of a bygone time.