Girlfriends begins with a camera clicking and a back turned. Susan Weinblatt takes a photo of her best friend Anne, asleep and touched by natural light. She works to immortalize Anne and by extension herself, to preserve their shared intimacy. Implied in a photo of Anne’s back is Susan’s access to it: the vulnerability that comes from building a life with someone, from sleeping near them. With this photo, Susan asserts her artistic vision, a vision that by definition includes Anne: writer, roommate, and muse. They are trying something out together. Trying to get there. When the photo is selected for a magazine, Susan rushes into a Laundromat to tell Anne: "You’re gonna be famous and I’m gonna be famous!"
But Anne is already facing away. In the same scene, she tells Susan she has gone and done the worst thing a best friend can do. She is engaged. Anne will move to the suburbs, she will honeymoon in Morocco, she will have a baby and find time for writing in the early mornings before her husband wakes up. She will be taken care of. Claudia Weill’s camera pulls back slowly on the two girls, standing apart while the washing machines whirl, getting smaller as the world gets bigger.
An unfortunate truth about being inclined towards lethargy is that, in its milder forms, it can feel good to feel sad. To be a bitch who yearns. Lethargy has a kind of sticky indulgence. The absence of enthusiasm creates space to dwell, to resist the speed at which we ought to be producing and persisting, letting a bitter note hang. I started experiencing low-grade chronic depression around age 15, fixating on failure and loss. When I finally went on SSRIs, my quality of life improved dramatically. Now that I have better company, I have an appreciation for slow nights alone, going back through fading memories, trying to recall sounds and tastes. Lethargy is not shattering heartbreak, screaming and sobbing because something has been scooped out of you, it is the sense that you are a room no one can enter.
After Anne leaves, Susan loses her bluster. Her jokes are softer, her energy sapped. She no longer runs into rooms. Instead, she slips out from a lover’s apartment in the middle of the night; she accepts rejected photos without comment; she cries watching reality TV. Her apartment is cluttered with boxes that wait to be unpacked. But Weill doesn’t luxuriate in this distress. Girlfriends plays out as a series of vignettes, not a meditation on grief or loneliness but a deliberately paced story, a chronicle of loss passing through.
"Lethargy is not shattering heartbreak, screaming and sobbing because something has been scooped out of you, it is the sense that you are a room no one can enter."
As Susan struggles to build an independent life, she encounters new intimacies. She invites a hitchhiker into her home and watches her stretch; she kisses her rabbi, his hands caressing the shape of her face. She puts up a poster and a plant and buys herself fresh shrimp, laying them out in a circle. There’s no solution but a series of stops and starts and eventually, almost imperceptibly, Susan gets her gusto back, managing even to secure an exhibition of her work.
To be an artist is to oscillate between shutting yourself away and opening yourself up. You need the quiet to work and then you need to be able to emerge, to situate yourself in some kind of context. A picture is processed in the dark before it is exposed. The dull pace of lethargy can be a part of this process, can offer the space for you to visit yourself, digging into a feeling or an attachment, and then, hopefully, bring it all back up to surface. Girlfriends understands this state, and the importance of surfacing from it. Weill meets Susan in her solitude and opens her up again to the world gently, with patience and precision.
At the big exhibit, everyone is there: Susan’s parents, her lover, her rabbi, even the friends that have been too busy to hang out. Everyone, that is, except Anne. So Susan drives to the country to find her girl. They apologize and laugh and play games, like children who are just meeting, children who have known each other forever.
Girlfriends begins with a camera clicking and a back turned. Susan Weinblatt takes a photo of her best friend Anne, asleep and touched by natural light. She works to immortalize Anne and by extension herself, to preserve their shared intimacy. Implied in a photo of Anne’s back is Susan’s access to it: the vulnerability that comes from building a life with someone, from sleeping near them. With this photo, Susan asserts her artistic vision, a vision that by definition includes Anne: writer, roommate, and muse. They are trying something out together. Trying to get there. When the photo is selected for a magazine, Susan rushes into a Laundromat to tell Anne: "You’re gonna be famous and I’m gonna be famous!"
But Anne is already facing away. In the same scene, she tells Susan she has gone and done the worst thing a best friend can do. She is engaged. Anne will move to the suburbs, she will honeymoon in Morocco, she will have a baby and find time for writing in the early mornings before her husband wakes up. She will be taken care of. Claudia Weill’s camera pulls back slowly on the two girls, standing apart while the washing machines whirl, getting smaller as the world gets bigger.
An unfortunate truth about being inclined towards lethargy is that, in its milder forms, it can feel good to feel sad. To be a bitch who yearns. Lethargy has a kind of sticky indulgence. The absence of enthusiasm creates space to dwell, to resist the speed at which we ought to be producing and persisting, letting a bitter note hang. I started experiencing low-grade chronic depression around age 15, fixating on failure and loss. When I finally went on SSRIs, my quality of life improved dramatically. Now that I have better company, I have an appreciation for slow nights alone, going back through fading memories, trying to recall sounds and tastes. Lethargy is not shattering heartbreak, screaming and sobbing because something has been scooped out of you, it is the sense that you are a room no one can enter.
After Anne leaves, Susan loses her bluster. Her jokes are softer, her energy sapped. She no longer runs into rooms. Instead, she slips out from a lover’s apartment in the middle of the night; she accepts rejected photos without comment; she cries watching reality TV. Her apartment is cluttered with boxes that wait to be unpacked. But Weill doesn’t luxuriate in this distress. Girlfriends plays out as a series of vignettes, not a meditation on grief or loneliness but a deliberately paced story, a chronicle of loss passing through.
"Lethargy is not shattering heartbreak, screaming and sobbing because something has been scooped out of you, it is the sense that you are a room no one can enter."
As Susan struggles to build an independent life, she encounters new intimacies. She invites a hitchhiker into her home and watches her stretch; she kisses her rabbi, his hands caressing the shape of her face. She puts up a poster and a plant and buys herself fresh shrimp, laying them out in a circle. There’s no solution but a series of stops and starts and eventually, almost imperceptibly, Susan gets her gusto back, managing even to secure an exhibition of her work.
To be an artist is to oscillate between shutting yourself away and opening yourself up. You need the quiet to work and then you need to be able to emerge, to situate yourself in some kind of context. A picture is processed in the dark before it is exposed. The dull pace of lethargy can be a part of this process, can offer the space for you to visit yourself, digging into a feeling or an attachment, and then, hopefully, bring it all back up to surface. Girlfriends understands this state, and the importance of surfacing from it. Weill meets Susan in her solitude and opens her up again to the world gently, with patience and precision.
At the big exhibit, everyone is there: Susan’s parents, her lover, her rabbi, even the friends that have been too busy to hang out. Everyone, that is, except Anne. So Susan drives to the country to find her girl. They apologize and laugh and play games, like children who are just meeting, children who have known each other forever.