7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
When her best friend and roommate abruptly moves out to get married, Susan, trying to be an artist while making ends meet as a bar mitzvah photographer on Manhattan's Upper West Side, finds herself adrift in both life and love.
Starring: Melanie Mayron, Anita Skinner, Eli Wallach, Christopher Guest, Bob BalabanDrama | 100% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.67:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: LPCM Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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.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.
The original monaural soundtrack was remastered from a magnetic track using Avid's Pro Tools and iZotope RX.
Girlfriends features an LPCM Mono track which provides more than capable support for the film's kind of "fly on the wall" sound design. Essentially a talk fest, Girlfriends' dialogue always sounds clear and clean in this rendition, and the use of both ambient environmental sounds courtesy of an often busy urban environment as well as scoring encounter no problems whatsoever. Optional English subtitles are available.
Girlfriends may be almost willfully slight at times, but it delivers some honest emotion, and it certainly provides a fantastic showcase for the always wonderful Melanie Mayron. Some of the dialogue struck me as even clunkier than I had remembered it as being from my first viewing of the film decades ago, but the overall feeling here is heartfelt and actually rather sweet. Technical merits are solid, and the supplementary package very enjoyable. Recommended.
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