Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends is effortless and great – an intimate, sad and funny look at changing life in New York for aspiring photographer Susan (Melanie Mayron) and her once-roommate, aspiring writer Anne (Anita Skinner).
Weill’s film is textbook “late-in, early-out,” especially the former. It’s such a strong screenwriting principle – one that I try to live by – and here she finds exactly the correct moments to enter and exit scenes. That’s easier said than done.
That’s what drives the beginning of one of the best scenes of the film. Susan bursts into a back room with Rabbi Gold (a great Eli Wallach). They’ve clearly come from some event and the humor that’s brought them into the space happens entirely off-screen. He leaves the frame and we stay with her in a full shot:
Soon she slumps comfortably into a chair and he turns into an OTS:
Weill goes into tighter shot-reverse, coming back to that well-designed master in between:
Susan dances hilariously in a new shot. The camera pans with her, and then there’s an even tighter single of Rabbi Gold, watching her excitedly:
The scene, which will eventually lead to a beautifully intimate, touching beat on the couch between the unlikely pair, moves here to tighter singles on Susan:
It’s well blocked and made bold by Mayron’s awesome performance that sometimes verges on the hysterical. Weill keeps us pretty close throughout: we’re always in the room in her scenes, never just a distant spectator.
An earlier scene between Susan and Anne plays down on a hallway. Anne reads a new poem and then Susan bursts out of the bathroom, moving rapidly to camera-
-and then back away from camera:
The scene is fast for Susan and slow for Anne. Their conflicting attitudes and goals really make it work. It’s classic in the sense that both fight for what they want and that there’s real urgency, but it’s also just real and human, and we really feel Anne’s internal struggle by keeping her in that close-up and mostly open to camera for the scene.
I think this is one of the major strengths of Girlfriends. The setups are simple, but always effective. The locations are real and usually small, so Well and DP Fred Murphy do a great job of finding that perfect space to have a bit of depth in the scene but also really focus in on character.
The film is also very funny and touching. A scene where Weill tries to force her way into the photography industry is softly comic, beautifully art directed (/location scouted), and full of life.
La Femme Publique
An erotic melodrama about a historical melodrama, OR a fever-pitched softcore porn about a fever-pitched period piece, OR the worst film with the best camera, OR how many ways can we think of to get Valérie Kaprisky naked?, OR the louder I say it the more I mean it.
Andrzej Zuławski’s film has a really amazing, dynamic, wide angle camera-
-but it’s an empty, failed attempt at Possession Part II.
Are any of the performances in this film actually good? I don’t really think so. Kaprisky is trying so hard-
-but Zuławski doesn’t see her as a real person, just a vehicle for his drama. When she gives what’s supposed to be the clinching spider monologue at the end (the second still above) you either question the director of the film within the film (which you do all along), or Zuławski (which you do all along).
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