That time a woman tried to direct a Woody Allen movie

Er, not quite

Another of those movies that seems to be popping up a bit more frequently on TCM that I had never seen is Girlfriends. (It was distributed by Warner Bros., and ticks off demographic check boxes, which would probably this.) I decided to record the most recent airing so that I could watch it and do a review here.

Melanie Mayron plays Susan, a struggling photographer in New York living with her best friend, equally struggling writer Anne (Anita Skinner). Now, you could be forgiven for thinking this is going to turn into a lesbian relationship like The Fox, but both women are going to wind up getting boyfriends later in the story. Susan does the wedding thing; also, being Jewish, she gets hired for a lot of bar mitzvahs among the secular lefty Jewish community of Manhattan. It's through this that she meets Rabbi Gold (Eli Wallach), and eventually tries to have a relationship with him, although he's got a wife and kid.

Anne, meanwhile, already has a boyfriend in Martin (Bob Balaban), who eventually asks Anne to marry him. This she does, moving to the suburbs and eventually getting pregnant. Susan is jealous not so much because she wants a husband and kid, but because she seems to want Anne all for herself. But in addition to the rabbi, she's going to get another boyfriend in Eric (Christopher Guest), along with picking up an obnoxious houseguest who doesn't seem to want to leave in the form of Ceil, a would-be dancer Susan picks up as a hitch-hiker when Susan is driving back to New York.

Finally, there's also the subplot of Susan wanting to get a gallery show rather than having to do the commercial photography that pays the bills. She finagles her way into the office of a prominent gallery owner, claiming she's been sent by someone whom she's never actually met before. But it still works out for her.

If it all sounds a bit scattershot, that's because in many ways it is. Director Claudia Weill didn't have much money to make this movie; in addition, it started out as a short. So she filmed when she could get the money, which would help explain why it jumps from one plot line to another and feels episodic. Girlfriends certainly isn't a bad movie, although I do have to admit that there were times when I found it difficulty to have sympathy with the characters. Watching Susan felt like watching the more neurotic Woody Allen characters of the Annie Hall and Manhattan era. On the plus side, the movie does a good job of documenting a certain time and cultural milieu, even if it's one that's not what I'm most interested in when I want to see something new to me.

If, however, you like Woody Allen's New York, then I think you'll enjoy Girlfriends.