Girlfriends as a Response to Female Friendship Stereotypes
Written by Lana Spota
December 17 2024
Still taken from Girlfriends (1978)
Embedded Files
Two young women move into their first apartment. The so-called ‘home’ is incomplete and bare. More, an untouched canvas, a place that isn’t really a home yet, more like an empty vessel waiting for them to breathe life into it. They meticulously place their new lives on brick walls and empty shelves, and learn more about each other through the hair left in the shower drain and messy dishes that lie in the sink. But, they know this won’t last forever; the apartment, like their friendship, is a temporary construction, an experiment in shared intimacy that will either solidify or collapse under the weight of time and circumstance. This is the quiet genius of Girlfriends (1978) - a film that refuses to indulge in the conventional tropes of female friendship. Instead, director Claudia Weill presents a nuanced portrait of two women navigating the messiness of life, each learning about the other not through grand gestures or melodramatic confrontations, but through the mundane details of cohabitation. It is a film grounded in the lived reality of female friendships, where the conflicts are not resolved with a simple twist of fate or a neat, tidy wrap-up, but rather with the slow, difficult work of learning to live alongside each other - flaws, mess, and all. And in doing so, Girlfriends pushes against the stereotypes that have long defined female relationships in cinema, opting instead for a story that is as incomplete and evolving as the apartment these women call home.
In classic Hollywood, female friendship often resembles nothing so much as a particularly well-dressed, meticulously staged theater production, where the interactions are less about true emotional connection and more about reflecting society’s often parodic understanding of what it means to be "a woman." These friendships are routinely depicted as a curious mix of either passive rivalry or breathless emotional devotion, with women either inexplicably sabotaging one another over men or holding each other up in a way that only seems to serve the narrative needs of the male gaze. It’s as if these friendships, as presented in their two-dimensional, melodramatic form, are always simultaneously too close and too distant, verging on either implausible codependency or stiff, competitive caricature. The idea of a woman bonding with another without some complicated layer of envy or need for validation is, it seems, too radical for the mainstream. Instead, these friendships exist like inanimate props, designed not for depth but for appearance: women speak in clipped, hyper-articulate tones that suggest intelligence, but their relationships? Always caught somewhere between outright betrayal and reverential adoration, like some kind of badly rehearsed, slightly warped version of what women in real life would want and expect from their friends. Because women on screen, it seems, cannot be friends without the baggage of some deeper, unspeakable conflict, some dramatic flaw, some cosmic need to remain locked in a dynamic where love and hatred are indistinguishable - because the real terror, apparently, lies in the terrifying idea that women could actually, truly, be friends.
Take, for example, The First Wives Club (1996). In this film, the female friendships are framed as the ultimate salvation from the emotional carnage of failed marriages, where the women’s bond becomes a source of catharsis that’s nearly flawless. They spend their time cracking jokes, plotting revenge on their ex-husbands, and celebrating their newfound independence, but we never really see them grapple with the real complexities of maintaining a deep, long-term friendship: the competition, the jealousy, the tension over shared history or unresolved personal issues. Or in Bridesmaids (2011), a film that on the surface celebrates female friendship, but often simplifies it into comedic exaggeration. The bond between Annie (Kristen Wiig) and her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is framed around over-the-top incidents like the infamous bridal shop scene or the disastrous bachelorette party, which are meant to be hilarious but seem more like the result of random chaos than the result of any real conflict or emotional strain. Annie’s jealousy over Lillian’s friendship with Helen (Rose Byrne) is played for laughs, but the film never delves deeply into the underlying tensions of why Annie feels so threatened or the complex emotional undercurrents at play. The friendships in Bridesmaids serve more to drive the humor and the plot, rather than reflecting the nuanced, often unspoken emotional labor that goes into maintaining friendships.
Why, in a world where we have access to a seemingly infinite set of narratives about human experience, do filmmakers continue to present female friendships as these squeaky-clean, oversimplified, almost sanitized versions of reality - ones that are more akin to the sort of idealized relationships we see on a Lifetime movie marathon than the messy, ambivalent, and often painfully complex friendships that most women (and people, in general) experience? Well, the answer isn't some singular, neatly packaged "reason." No, it's more like an intricate tangle of cultural inertia, commercial interests, and a refusal to really look at what's underneath the surface of women's relationships - stuff that might make audiences uncomfortable, or worse, think. It’s easier to spoon-feed that glowy, faux-empowered, “Besties forever!” dynamic, which feels safe, digestible, and nonthreatening.
Weill’s refusal to conform to classical Hollywood standards is recognized beyond plot and characters. Her camerawork relies on the illusion of a natural experience, like simply sharing the space with the characters, hanging out in their world. This calls for minimal, conscious camera movement, continuous editing that should serve as unhurried glances at life, and linearity in a loose, almost inconspicuous way - all of which Weill employs in this film very strategically. In the opening scene of Girlfriends, Claudia Weill expertly sets the stage for a film that’s as much about the spaces between people as it is about the characters themselves. Weill’s directorial choices are quiet, unobtrusive, and profoundly ordinary - a bare apartment, empty walls, no glossy decor, no sweeping romantic or dramatic music to tell you how to feel. We see Susan (Melanie Mayron), photographing her roommate Anne (Anita Skinner) in the early hours of the morning, where everything is silent except for the two breathing in harmony. The choice of low-key lighting establishes a sense of privacy between the two, or, depending on how you look at it, isolation. You’ll notice how the women’s faces often hover in a mix of light and darkness, like their emotional states - unresolved, ambiguous, teetering between clarity and confusion. You can’t quite see everything, and this is Weill’s intention. You’re not supposed to see everything. While it may seem that Weill is following the conventions of filmmaking, if you look closely, you learn that she messes with it, just a little. The way characters are placed in the frame is often subtly off-center or framed in ways that feel a little uncomfortable, as if the moment is almost perfectly balanced but not quite. Think of the wide shots of the apartment: They’re neat, composed, and "normal." But the longer you stare at them, the more you notice the spaces - the empty walls, the unused corners - the gaps between the characters. Weill doesn’t use continuity editing just to make things feel overly smooth or neat. The cuts are functional, but sometimes they feel a bit disjointed, almost as if you’re being led in one direction and then abruptly asked to pay attention to something small - something emotional or relational - just off to the side. There’s an intentional slight discomfort to the rhythm, an acknowledgment that life doesn’t follow a script, and neither should the editing. Even the way the film moves as a story is meaningful. Sure, there’s a basic plot structure: Susan, the protagonist, struggles with her relationships and her own identity as she moves through her twenties. But the way the narrative unfolds is deliberately nonchalant. It’s less about “what happens next” and more about how things happen. The growth we see isn’t some neat process where everything is perfectly resolved by the end. Instead, the film’s linearity is more about observing a life lived without the pressure of dramatic, closing beats. Susan’s friendship with Anne, her romantic entanglements, her creative ambitions - they don’t progress in a straight line. Instead, it feels like life itself: messy, unpredictable, full of fits and starts, with pauses and interruptions, and sometimes no real closure.
In Girlfriends, the relationships between women are not the sidebars to the narrative of romance, as Hollywood hasd taught audiences to expect, but are instead woven into the very fabric of the emotional and psychological exploration of the film itself. The film, in its own subtle, meandering way, posits that friendships between women can be as intense, as confounding, and as emotionally tangled as any romantic relationship. The central bond between Susan and Anne isn’t a shallow backdrop to their respective love lives; it’s a core narrative force that drives the plot, and not merely because one character's actions impact the other in a vaguely sympathetic, “oh, I should be here for you” way. Rather, these two women - through their misunderstandings, jealousies, and moments of genuine intimacy - are depicted as having a coupling dynamic, where love and resentment swirl in ways that are just as complex as the feelings between romantic partners. In fact, Weill herself states that, “What I tried to do was show that female friendship is as fragile, delicate, supportive, complex, nourishing, painful, and difficult as a love affair… It is not unlike a marriage”. The film actively resists the stereotype of female friendships as some bland, peripheral support network for women to lean on between romantic dramas, as if the relationship between friends is some innocent, easily understood auxiliary to the real, "important" stuff - the men. No, in Girlfriends, these women’s lives are intricately connected in ways that demand the same level of investment and complexity we reserve for the primary couple dynamics in any other romantic narrative. In the film, friendships, like love, involve the same level of discomfort, betrayal, joy, and growth. These friendships do not operate as mere support structures for women’s romantic entanglements - they are the entanglements themselves. It’s a movie where the bonds between women are neither simplistic nor safe, and where the friendship between Susan and Anne could be, in another version of the story, as combustible and poignant as any love affair.
The film also dismantles the notion that romantic love is a cure-all for the complexities of a woman’s life, a lesson we’re often taught to expect in movies but which here is left painfully unfulfilled. The protagonist, Susan, embarks on her search for fulfillment - first through the unstable allure of a new relationship, then through her burgeoning independence - but instead of presenting romance as a neat solution to her problems, the film exposes how love, far from being an escape, often deepens her internal confusion and sense of isolation. The men she encounters - while initially seeming to promise something grand - are, like most men in the film, as perplexing and unsatisfying as the world they inhabit. The movie doesn’t offer the comforting illusion that romantic love will somehow make everything better, nor does it allow the audience to believe that Susan's relationship with men, or the societal expectations of femininity, can provide any easy answers. Instead, Girlfriends suggests that such answers - at least those promised by the narrative of romantic salvation - might not even be possible in the confines of a rigid, patriarchal society that devalues women’s autonomy and reduces them to little more than roles to be played for men’s pleasure. The idea that a woman can "solve" her personal conflicts through romance is undercut here by the very nature of Susan’s life: the more she reaches for that ideal, the more she finds herself ensnared by it, her needs and desires ultimately suppressed in a world where self-actualization for women is perpetually thwarted by structures of control. Karen Hollinger, author of “In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films”, states herself that, “In the classical Hollywood text, the key to adequate and satisfying closure is romance. The ending of Girlfriends violates Hollywood norms because it implies that romantic love does not provide the answer for its female characters and that an answer to their problems may not even be possible in a society that puts such a high premium on romance”. The film isn’t merely skeptical of romantic love; it suggests that it is not the answer at all, at least not in a society where that answer is designed by the very forces that constrain women.
Even aside from romance, the film serves as a realistic observation of female artists, specifically when patronized by male dominated industries. Susan is a photographer, but not a glamorous one, or one who knows just exactly what to do at any given moment. There's no moment of sudden inspiration, no glossy shoot with perfectly lit subjects where she’s suddenly "discovered" as the next great artistic force. Instead, the film shows us the logistics of artistic survival: the small, unglamorous gigs, the endless self-questioning, the financial instability, and the constant negotiation between personal desire and professional compromise. It’s as though Susan’s art is always at odds with the larger narrative of her life - her creative voice has to contend not just with the art world, but with the world that tells her, implicitly and explicitly, that her voice doesn’t matter as much as, say, a man’s, or that her artistic value is contingent on how well it conforms to certain expectations of femininity or sexuality. There’s a sense, almost palpable, that Susan’s struggle is not just against the forces of commerce or competition in the art world, but against the very idea that a woman’s life - her struggles, her art, her independence - could be as significant as any man’s. It’s the suffocating awareness that even when you have talent, you don’t always have the same platform, the same recognition, the same opportunities.
Even with Anne, the film pulls no punches in showing how the struggle of being a female artist isn’t just about the work itself, but the entire ecosystem of external expectations, internal self-doubt, and the relentless ping-pong between what you want to do and what you have to do. There’s this super familiar, almost scarily accurate, portrayal of becoming a mother and having to drop most of what you do to take care of a child. Author of “Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Women's Cinema,” Lucy Fischer, states, “We see her typing Martin's dissertation—a scene signifying the submergence of her creative interests in his. Furthermore, after having a child, she gives up thoughts of school and career. When she tries to write again, we see her attempting to work against the inhospitable background of her baby's cries”. It’s not just that she can’t focus on the dissertation; it’s that the very expectation that she should somehow be able to juggle the full-on emotional, intellectual, and domestic labor of being a mother, a partner, and an artist is portrayed with a brutal kind of clarity. There’s a kind of eerie normalcy to this portrayal, a “well, of course” kind of suffocation that you can’t shake off: it’s not just that she’s overwhelmed by a crying baby, a lack of space to think, or the literal noise; it’s that the world around her has structured her life into a game where the rules are that you’re supposed to be able to do it all - but, and this is the insidious thing, do it all perfectly, without any space for failing. The camera doesn’t flinch, doesn’t soften the edges of her exhaustion, but instead forces you to sit with it, as the tension between her desires and the brutal, constricting shape of her reality plays out in the background, a constant hum of impossibility. It’s that unspoken understanding that her desires - herself - are being continually edged out, shoved aside by forces both external and internal, and the film doesn’t offer a neat resolution. There’s no romantic redemption, no tidy feminist resolution, just the sense that Anne is wrestling with an unyielding narrative: you can try to have it all, but the question - whether you should, or even can - remains terrifyingly unanswered. The film doesn’t romanticize this multitasking; it shows it as an impossible balancing act, where the creative spark she once had is now dimmed by the demands of a system that still, at its core, doesn’t believe women can do it all - not because they lack the talent or the drive, but because the world is still rigged against them. Anne’s struggle isn’t just about trying to carve out time for her art - it’s about a society that not only asks women to be everything but also expects them to be good at it, effortlessly. The scene isn’t a sob story; it’s a weary truth about how the expectations placed on female artists are not just about their work being good enough, but about their work being secondary to the demands of being a woman in a world that still doesn’t quite know what to do with women who don’t choose to play by the rules.
Girlfriends thrives in its depiction of the banal everyday. It takes what could be seen as inconsequential - waking up, making breakfast, dealing with a broken refrigerator, fumbling through a conversation with a boyfriend - and elevates it into something emotionally loaded, as though every cup of coffee brewed, every door slammed, carries the weight of unspoken history. There’s a deliberate, almost hypnotic attention to the most ordinary details of Susan and Anne’s lives: the clutter of an apartment, the quiet rhythm of their routines, the practical constraints of trying to exist as a woman in a society that demands so much, but never gives quite enough in return. It’s simply real life, the kind of life most people - especially women - know intimately: the tiredness of finishing work only to have to think about what’s for dinner, the impossibility of finding time to be alone when everyone else needs something. And in this, Girlfriends finds a way to make the mundane not just relatable, but almost a kind of shared experience. We see Susan and Anne in their most unvarnished states, and we’re invited to feel that sense of commonality. Even the film’s credits have a resemblance to everyday life, with photo strips of the girls spending time together, something that a female audience might relate to. Fischer writes, “One thinks of the credit sequence that unrolls against a backdrop of dime-store-machine snap shots of Susan and Anne—the kind of self-portraits that girls have fashioned when they chum around together”. When we are invited to see ourselves within the film, the characters and plot gain the benefit of us reaching out to them, almost to say, “I’ve been there before.”
And this level of immersion, of putting the viewer into the exact same space as these characters, is even further facilitated by the casting choices: Melanie Mayron, the lead actress, who doesn’t conform to the traditional Hollywood standards of beauty. Mayron’s Susan isn’t the kind of striking, effortlessly glamorous woman we’re accustomed to seeing in leading roles, which makes her instantly more accessible, more real. There’s something about her unassuming, imperfect appearance - her slightly disheveled look, her lack of conventional polish - that invites the audience to project themselves into her life. She’s not a distant ideal, but a person you might pass on the street, someone you could know. Weill says herself that, “The only criterion I had by which to judge performances, sets, was whether they felt real”. This casting decision works because it grounds the film in a kind of gritty authenticity. Susan’s struggles - whether in her work, her relationships, or simply in navigating her day - feel universal because, in a way, they’re happening to you too.
And yet, perhaps the most profound achievement of Girlfriends is how it resists the tidy narratives we’re so accustomed to, both in cinema and in life itself. The film, at every turn, reminds us that there is no ultimate resolution - no neat, pat ending where everything clicks into place. Susan’s growth, her understanding of herself and her place in the world, isn’t handed to her in a tidy box with a ribbon on top. It’s a slow, frustrating process, full of trial and error, of forging a path that, like her apartment, is only ever halfway furnished. The friendship with Anne, too, remains unresolved - an ongoing negotiation of presence and absence, of connection and disconnection, as if to suggest that this, too, is the nature of all human relationships. In a world that demands closure, Girlfriends offers something rarer: the dignity of ambiguity. It embraces the fact that sometimes, we don’t fully understand each other, not because we’re incapable of it, but because human connection is messy. It’s real in a way Hollywood often refuses to be, and it’s in this commitment to unpolished, unfinished truths that the film transcends the limitations of its genre. Even after almost fifty years, Girlfriends is, at its core, a meditation on the ineffable, often untold complexity of human connection. The apartment is empty, and yet full. The friendship is imperfect, and yet enduring. In the same way, Girlfriends leaves us with a profound, perhaps disorienting sense that life is neither the sum of our neatly resolved plot arcs, nor the exhaustive search for some final truth. It’s just… this. This, with all its ambiguities, its messes, and its unspoken moments. And isn’t that just, maybe, all that we need to know?
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