Girlfriends Blu-ray Review
Neither of them sings.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 14, 2020
It might seem intuitively obvious that a woman might be best poised to make a film
about women and how they establish and maintain
friendships, and yet it might be hard for many (as it is for me) to think of many examples of a film dealing at least tangentially about this very
subject
which was helmed by a woman, before Claudia Weill's
Girlfriends debuted in 1978. I guess a case might be made for some of Agnès
Varda's
films like
Cléo from 5 to 7 and/or
One Sings, the Other Doesn't (available in
the immense
set
The Complete Films of Agnès Varda
,
also released by The Criterion Collection), but in the case of at least the first named Varda film, there's a whimsical, almost magical realist, element
at times
that may tend to divorce the proceedings from more
cinéma vérité suffused sensibilities.
One Sings, the Other Doesn't may be
one of the better analogs, at least within Varda's
oeuvre, in that it, like this film, features some subtext involving still photographs. (Kind
of interestingly, in one of the supplements
included on this disc, Claudia Weill singles out Jean Luc Godard as a prime influence, and many will of course know of the long relationship,
sometimes
fractious, between Godard and Varda.) With regard to a
vérité ambience, though, the fact that Claudia Weill came to
this project after years in the documentary idiom means that
Girlfriends tends to be more "down to earth" in how it offers an assessment
of
a sometimes dysfunctional relationship between two young women, aspiring photographer Susan Weinblatt (Melanie Mayron) and would be writer
Anne Munroe (Anita Skinner), who is, at least as the film begins, Susan's roommate in a rather cramped New York apartment.
There's a subgenre of anime called "slice of life" where frankly not much in the way of epochal events ever happens, and in some ways
Girlfriends
certainly fits snugly within that template. It's also vignette driven in much the same way "slice of life" anime often are, with a series of
interchanges that tend to arguably move the story forward, but which are often microcosmic displays of Weill's overarching concerns with how
Susan
in particular matriculates some "life changes" in both career and personal relationships. Kind of interestingly, at least within the confines of what
might be seen as "feminist filmmaking", the two BFFs at the center of
Girlfriends have their first real challenge when Anne ultimately
moves
out and then marries a guy named Martin (Bob Balaban).
In the meantime, the film also deals quite a bit with Susan's career challenges. She manages to make ends meet by photographing events like Bar
Mitzvahs, but she yearns to achieve something more meaningful and long lasting. She seems to be on the verge of success early in the film, a
hoped
for "happy ending" that is initially dashed. There's also a somewhat curious subplot involving Susan's probably questionable romantic feelings for
an
elderly rabbi named Aaron Gold (Eli Wallach) who, it turns out, is married. There's probably some subtext that scenarist Vicki Polon may be
offering
here in terms of a supposed arbiter of morality being willing to stray himself, but the film deals with this aspect more as a coming to terms with
growing up and realizing personal mistakes from Susan's point of view than as any kind of "meta" analysis.
The film does offer a number of small but effective pleasures along the way, including a fun chance to see both Bob Balaban and Christopher Guest
(who plays another potential suitor to Susan, named Eric) relatively early in their careers. There's an interesting piece of stunt casting as well,
though many may not be aware of it. Viveca Lindfors is on hand as a gallery owner whom Susan deals with, but that's Lindfors' real life son
Kristofer
Tabori also in the film in a small role as Charlie by her side. Weill offers a realistic depiction of "life in the big city", even if Polon's dialogue can be
a little forced and
unnatural on more than one occasion.
Girlfriends Blu-ray, Video Quality
Girlfriends is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. The insert booklet
included with this release contains the following information on the transfer:
Girlfriends is presented in director Claudia Weill's preferred aspect ratio of 1.66:1 [sic]. On standard 4:3 televisions, the image will
appear letterboxed. On standard and widescreen televisions, black bars may also be visible on the left and right to maintain the proper screen format.
This new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on a Lasergraphics Director film scanner at Deluxe EFILM in Hollywood from the 16 mm A/B roll
original camera negative. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, and warps were manually removed using MTI Film's DRS, while
Digital Vision's Phoenix was used for jitter, flicer, small dirt, and noise management.
The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from a magnetic track using Avid's Pro Tools and iZotope RX.
While this is almost a paradigmatic example of low budget independent film, with its attendant smaller format source, the transfer here is hugely
appealing almost all of the time. Yes, things are
very heavily grainy a lot of the time, especially in some of the more dimly lit interior scenes,
but for the most part grain resolves beautifully and organically. The palette is also very nicely suffused, with some reds in particular popping very well.
I felt that things were just a
bit peach colored at times in terms of things like flesh tones, but not to a point where I would consider anything
looking really unnatural. There are some fluctuations in clarity and fine detail levels, sometimes coupled with slight focus pulling anomalies. I noticed
no compression issues and no real damage or other age related wear and tear of any major import.