Girlfriends is a 1978

1978 in film

The year 1978 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 1 - Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara, a documentary of the "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour premieres in Los Angeles, California....

 comedy-drama

Comedy-drama

Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...

 film directed by Claudia Weill

Claudia Weill

Claudia Weill is an American film director best known for her film Girlfriends , starring Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban and Eli Wallach, which she made independently, then sold to Warner Bros after multiple awards at Cannes, Filmex and Sundance...

 and written by Vicki Polon.

Cast

• Melanie Mayron
  Melanie Mayron
  Melanie Joy Mayron is an American actress and director of film and television. Mayron is best known for portraying the role of photographer Melissa Steadman on the ABC drama Thirtysomething.-Biography:...
  
   as Susan Weinblatt
• Eli Wallach
  Eli Wallach
  Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
  
   as Rabbi Gold
• Anita Skinner as Anne Munroe
• Bob Balaban
  Bob Balaban
  Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director.-Personal life:Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television...
  
   as Martin
• Christopher Guest
  Christopher Guest
  Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest , better known as Christopher Guest, is an American screenwriter, composer, musician, director, actor and comedian. He is most widely known in Hollywood for having written, directed and starred in several improvisational "mockumentary" films that...
  
   as Eric
• Roderick Cook
  Roderick Cook
  Roderick Cook was an English playwright, writer, theatre director and actor of stage, television and film...
  
   as Carpel

Reception

Stanley Kubrick brought up the film in 1980 when being interviewed by Vicente Molina Foix at Kubrick's house.

Foix: Are you interested in the new paths or trends within current Hollywood production being tried by people like Coppola, Schrader, Spielberg, Scorsese or DePalma?




Kubrick: I think one of the most interesting Hollywood films, well not Hollywood -- American films -- that I've seen in a long time is Claudia Weill's Girlfriends. That film, I thought, was one of the very rare American films that I would compare with the serious, intelligent, sensitive writing and filmmaking that you find in the best directors in Europe. It wasn't a success, I don't know why; it should have been. Certainly I thought it was a wonderful film. It seemed to make no compromise to the inner truth of the story, you know, the theme and everything else.

...

The great problem is that the films cost so much now; in America it's almost impossible to make a good film -- which means you have to spend a certain amount of time on it, and have good technicians and good actors -- that aren't very, very expensive. This film that Claudia Weill did, I think she did on an amateur basis; she shot it for about a year, two or three days a week. Of course she had a great advantage, because she had all the time she needed to think about it, to see what she had done. I thought she made the film extremely well.

Awards

In 1978, Girlfriends won Bronze Leopard award for Best Actress at the Locarno International Film Festival

Locarno International Film Festival

The Film Festival Locarno is an international film festival held annually in the city of Locarno, Switzerland since 1946. After Cannes and Venice and together with Karlovy Vary, Locarno is the Film Festival with the longest history...

 and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival

Toronto International Film Festival

The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...

. In 1979 it won the Special David award at the David di Donatello Awards. That year it was also nominated for a Golden Globe award and a BAFTA Award.