bkoganbing
Girlfriends, a bittersweet tale of two female roommates split apart when one gets married. The other, our protagonist in this film is all at sea. The two women out of necessity and believe me this is true in New York City came together to share rent. But living together as you do and hitting it off you get to share lives.Melanie Mayron and Anita Skinner are the roommates. Out of the blue one fine day Skinner announces she's marrying Bob Balaban. At that point Mayron is just lost. Mind you there's nothing sexual going on with them, but Skinner can't adjust to now being alone. Even a relationship with Christopher Guest just ain't the same thing as sisterhood.Eli Wallach the old family rabbi and a most modern thinker keeps Mayron employed in her profession as a photographer using her as a wedding photographer. Mayron is pursuing this as an art form as well and here she has the encouragement of museum exhibitor Viveca Lindfors. Will success in her profession fill a lot of the emptiness?Girlfriends is a nice character study from the women's point of view. Not much of a plot but seem character portrayals.
priddy
i saw this at the theater when it came out, haven't thought about it since and i think very few others have either. it's not even in my 1994 Leonard Maltin guide. but it remained with me regardless, to the point that a chance encounter with the title just now provoked me to come here to say that all these good reviews are well deserved. i'm almost afraid to find and watch it again... no, i'm confident i'll like it just as much, even thirty-five years later. hmm, too bad i have to write ten lines; i thought i had said it all. what to add? that sometimes, as with this review, less is better, and film might be better with less than Woody Allen would have done with more. oh, and that Kubrick called it the best film of 1978.
Shilpot7
The central figure, played by Melanie Mayron, is a photographer sharing a large funky apartment on the Upper West Side of New York with her best girlfriend. The girlfriend suddenly decides to get married to someone she's only recently met & this seems to throw our main character into a period of soul searching. Who is she without her best friend? Can she handle the loneliness? The jealousy?This film reminds me a lot of the Eric Rohmer films of the 70's & 80's...stylewise, it's very stark. Nothing much happens. But it's the ordinariness of the characters that seems to draw us in. In some ways, this film is too stark...so plain are the cast, so grey is the scenery & sometimes, so mundane the dialogue. But 'Girlfriends' has a warmth & a charm that has always made me remember it. To add to this, the film now has the look and feel of another era, the late 70s, which is now interesting to look at in retrospect.Fans of 'Thirtysomething', who enjoyed Melanie Mayron's character, Melissa, will especially like this film. There are a number of parallels between the two characters. She alone with her warm smile, crooked teeth and mass of wild hair, brings enormous humanity to the proceedings.
cinders63
Melanie Mayron portrays Susan Weinblatt, a struggling photographer trying to come to terms with the loss, through marriage, of her best friend and the complexities of dating in the 80's. Mayron gives a very believable performance which lightens an otherwise dreary plot.
AD
