In the sprawling landscape of 1970s American cinema, an era defined by the male-driven paranoia of Taxi Driver and the masculine angst of The Deer Hunter, Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends (1978) arrived not with a bang, but with the quiet, relentless hum of a refrigerator in a barely-affordable New York apartment. The film, often cited as a lost masterpiece and a direct ancestor of television dramas like Girls and Fleabag, is a deceptively modest study of female friendship, artistic ambition, and the terrifying banality of early adulthood. More than just a "women's picture," Girlfriends is a surgical dissection of the post-liberation woman who has won the right to a career and an apartment but has lost the manual for how to be alone. Through its naturalistic aesthetic, complex female gaze, and refusal of melodramatic catharsis, the film articulates a distinctly feminine anxiety: the fear that liberation might simply mean being gloriously, utterly adrift.
Girlfriends is also a quiet critique of the male gaze, though it rarely announces itself as such. Susan is a photographer, a female artist who looks. But she is also constantly being looked at—and, more importantly, touched—by men who mistake her availability for consent. The film’s treatment of sexuality is radical for its time precisely because it is unradical; it presents the casual, low-grade predation of urban life as a fact, not a plot point.
Susan has a series of romantic entanglements, each more disappointing than the last. There is the married, older artist (Eli Wallach) who uses her for emotional labor and sex, then patronizingly dismisses her work. There is the rabbi (Joe Silver) who becomes a brief, comfortable placeholder. And there is the narcissistic fellow artist who abandons her after a fleeting connection. Crucially, none of these men are villains. They are simply self-absorbed. Weill’s point is more insidious than demonization: she argues that the heterosexual marketplace is structurally rigged against women’s full personhood. The one man who seems kind—a hippie-ish drifter named Eric (Christopher Guest)—is ultimately asexual and unavailable, a mirror of Susan’s own emotional evasion. girlfriends films
The film’s most radical gesture is its depiction of an abortion. Unlike the hysterical, punitive abortions of earlier cinema, Susan’s procedure is presented as a medical, logistical, and slightly sad necessity. She goes alone, she pays cash, she eats a sandwich afterwards. It is not a moral crisis; it is a Tuesday. By draining the act of melodrama, Weill normalizes a woman’s right to her own body without apology or punishment.
Today’s girlfriends films are more complex, allowing women to be unlikable, ambitious, and flawed without losing our sympathy. In the sprawling landscape of 1970s American cinema,
For decades, the "girlfriend film" has been dismissed by critics as lightweight, formulaic, or simply "fluff." Yet, to categorize these movies solely as guilty pleasures is to ignore their profound cultural function. From Steel Magnolias to Bridesmaids to Past Lives, the girlfriend film is not merely about finding a man; it is a cinematic space where women explore their identities, navigate trauma, and—most importantly—witness the redemptive power of female friendship.
At its core, the girlfriend film operates on a specific emotional logic. Unlike the action blockbuster, which prizes external conflict, the girlfriend film thrives on internal and relational stakes. Think of the famous funeral scene in Steel Magnolias: while the plot involves marriage and loss, the climax is not a kiss but a cathartic explosion of grief shared between a circle of women. The film argues that a husband or son provides a framework for life, but it is the friends in the beauty parlor who provide the glue that holds you together when that framework shatters. Through its naturalistic aesthetic, complex female gaze, and
Critics often reduce the genre to the "rom-com" label, but this misses the distinction. A true girlfriend film treats the romantic subplot as secondary to the platonic bond. In Bridesmaids, Annie’s journey is ostensibly about competing for the role of Maid of Honor, but the resolution is not her winning the man (though she does) but her acceptance of vulnerability with her friend Lillian. The infamous food poisoning scene is not just slapstick; it is a brutal, hilarious, and deeply honest portrayal of how women endure humiliation and sickness together. It says: "I will sit in this bathtub with you while you are at your lowest."
Furthermore, these films serve as a crucial repository for female rage and ambition—emotions often denied to women in serious dramas. Waiting to Exhale uses the girlfriend film format to dissect emotional abuse and abandonment. The famous scene where the four friends burn their exes’ belongings is not an endorsement of arson; it is a ritual of liberation. The girlfriend film allows women to be messy, jealous, ambitious, and angry, all while keeping the safety net of the friend group intact.
Of course, the genre has its flaws. Early iterations were often heteronormative, whitewashed, and obsessed with marriage as the ultimate prize. However, modern evolutions like Booksmart, The Farewell, or Girls Trip have expanded the tent. These new girlfriend films acknowledge that the "girlfriend" can be a sister, a cousin, a coworker, or a rival. They show that the stakes of a friendship breakup can hurt as much as a romantic divorce.
In the end, the girlfriend film endures because it answers a simple question that most art ignores: "What do women do when no men are looking?" The answer, as these films show us, is that they laugh, they fight, they hold each other’s hair back, and they save each other’s lives. To dismiss that as a "guilty pleasure" is not a critique of the film—it is a fear of its honesty.