Film

Girlfriends

Name: Girlfriends
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 1978
Cast: Melanie Mayron, Eli Wallach, Adam Cohen, Anita Skinner, Jean De Baer

Claudia Weill's 1978 indie comedy-drama follows Susan, a struggling New York photographer, after her roommate and best friend abruptly leaves to get married. Loose, observational, and funny in a shrugging, deadpan way, it captures the disorientation of watching a friendship's shape change without anyone doing anything wrong. Quiet, low-budget, and unglamorous — for anyone who's felt a life move forward without them.

TMDb rating

6.7

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Frances Ha2013

Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's black-and-white portrait of a broke, ambitious New York woman watching her best friend's life outpace hers hits nearly the same beats as Girlfriends, just louder and funnier.

But Gerwig's manic charm can feel like a lot if you preferred Weill's quieter, more deadpan register.

An Unmarried Woman1978

Released the same year, Jill Clayburgh plays a woman rebuilding an identity after her marriage collapses, with the same unglamorous, lived-in New York texture and refusal to tie things up neatly.

But It's more purely about heartbreak and self-discovery than friendship, so the parallel is thematic rather than exact.

Girls2012

Dunham's messy, self-absorbed twenty-somethings feel like Susan's spiritual granddaughters — creative ambition, bad jobs, and friendships that fray under the weight of adulthood, stretched across six seasons instead of ninety minutes.

But The characters are often deliberately insufferable, which some viewers never warm to no matter how sharp the writing gets.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Stage Door1937no page yet

Both films use a shared apartment as the engine of the story, watching how ambition and affection tangle when women in the same room are chasing different futures — Girlfriends just does it with less varnish and more silence.

Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn headline a boardinghouse full of aspiring actresses trading barbs and borrowed dresses — quick, cynical, and decades ahead of its time about women competing and caring for each other at once.

But The rapid-fire 1930s dialogue and theatrical staging take adjustment if you're used to Weill's naturalistic drift.

Kissing Jessica Stein2002no page yet

A single, career-focused New York woman navigates identity and connection with the same wry, personal-ad specificity Weill brought to Susan's world, just filtered through early-2000s romantic comedy.

But It leans harder into rom-com structure and plot than Girlfriends ever does, trading loose realism for a tidier arc.

Tiny Furniture2010

Another female filmmaker's low-budget, semi-autobiographical debut about a directionless young woman adrift after college, filmed with the same handheld intimacy and comic deflation as Weill's work.

But Its heroine is more listless and less sympathetic than Susan, and the humor is drier to the point of discomfort.

Broad City2014

Turns the same low-stakes New York friendship comedy into pure absurdist joy — two women stumbling through jobs and relationships with a devotion to each other that never wavers.

But It's broader and sillier by design; if you want Girlfriends' melancholy undertow, this trades it for stoner slapstick.

Someone Great2019no page yet

A breakup sends a woman back into the arms of her two best friends for one last day together before their trio scatters — a modern, brighter cousin to Susan's story.

But Glossier and more conventionally plotted, with a soundtrack-driven sheen that's the opposite of Weill's rough textures.

Broadcast News1987

Holly Hunter's whip-smart, ambitious producer wrestling with love, ethics, and a career that consumes her offers the same unsentimental look at a woman choosing work over easy comfort.

But It's a newsroom ensemble piece rather than a friendship story, so the connection is more about tone and heroine than plot.

Support the Girls2018no page yet

Regina Hall anchors a quietly devastating comedy about women holding each other up through a terrible job and a terrible day, with the same generous, unglamorous eye for female solidarity.

But It's about work friendships rather than roommates, and the stakes are lower-key even than Girlfriends' modest ones.

Cameraperson2016

Susan spends Girlfriends trying to see her own life clearly through a camera she mostly points at other people — Cameraperson is that exact tension, made explicit, real, and unbearably tender.

Documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson builds a memoir entirely from decades of footage she shot for other people's films — a hushed, associative meditation on what it means to spend your life looking through a lens.

But There's no plot and barely any narration; it asks you to sit with fragments rather than follow a story.

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion1997no page yet

Strip away the tone and it's the same structural question as Girlfriends: what happens to a friendship when one woman's life visibly outpaces the other's — just played here as glorious, lipstick-bright camp instead of muted realism.

Two best friends, one feeling left behind by the other's apparent success, invent a fake life to survive a high school reunion — pure neon comedy built on the same fear Girlfriends treats quietly.

But It's broad, silly, and interested in laughs over truth — if you want Weill's ache, this replaces it with glitter and one-liners.