Female Friendship in Film

Booksmart

Director: Olivia Wilde, US, 2019

A feature directorial debut from Olivia Wilde, Booksmart didn’t initially hit my radar. I was travelling for most of 2019 so I only stumbled across it during the early months of the Covid lockdown in 2020. I have since seen it four times and just know it will be one of those films I return to again and again. 

Booksmart is a quintessential coming of age film, but with a whole lot of laughs thrown in. It follows best friends Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) on the eve of their high school graduation. This could be cheesy, or feel a bit too teen-movie for a self-respecting adult to enjoy, but in Wilde’s capable hands, those theories prove wholly unfounded. Set mainly over the course of one eventful evening, Amy and Molly (usually straight-A students) decide they need to experience everything from highschool that they’d missed out on over the previous years. This includes house parties with karaoke and swimming pools, accidentally ingesting marujuana brownies, getting a lift from a particularly shady driver, flirting with their crushes and so much more. 

With a superb supporting cast, from the super rich but unpopular classmate Jared (Skylar Gisondo) to the Principal-cum-Uber driver (Jason Sudeikis), the relationships and interactions in the film feel so believable. It’s an incredibly joyous journey and includes many touching moments between the two central characters. You’ve seen these girls over the course of one night, but you really feel like you’ve been watching them for years.

Sisterhood 

Director: Tracy Choi, Macau-Hong Kong, 2016

I typed ‘Sisterhood film 2016’ into Google and article upon article came up about a lesbian love story. ‘A poignant tale of lesbian love, loss and longing’ - South China Morning Post. Premieres at Toronto LGBT Film Festival and Queer East Film Festival. Did I completely misread this film? I read it as an all-encompassing love yes, but a platonic love. Were there possibly homoerotic undertones? Sure. But I thought the director was leaving that decision to the audience, not making it clear cut. So, I was relieved to find an interview with director Tracy Choi in LalaTai (which ok, is a LGBTQ+ magazine) where she speaks about Sisterhood: 

‘I do not mind that the audience calls Sisterhood a lesbian film. For me, the reason why I did not dig in this relationship deeper is because, after discussing it with the screenwriter, we both agreed there were two ways to make the story better. The first one was to make these two girls closer to each other and, the other one, was to let them stay as friends. At the end, we chose the latter because I think the level of complicity between the two girls conveyed in this film is perfect.’

So, ambiguity was the intention and love can be portrayed - and indeed felt - in many different ways. Now that’s cleared up, let’s speak about Sisterhood. The film opens with a woman, Sei (played by both Gigi Leung and Fish Liew at different ages), living a visibly unhappy life in Taiwan. She learns of the death of a friend from her past and from there the majority of the film is told in flashbacks, examining the friendship between Sei and Ling (Jennifer Yu) while they worked and lived together in Macau. The film shows two women who are not reliant on men to live their lives. When Ling becomes pregnant, the two women raise her son together. Sisterhood is a truly beautiful film, with an ending that is bound to make you cry. I couldn’t recommend it more. 

Honourable Mention:

Joy Ride (2023) - We’re not saying this is great have-to-see-before-you-die cinema. But it 100% lives up to its name. It is joyous and it is a ride - in the emotional rollercoaster sense, in the sexual-connotations way and in the ‘ride or die’ way. It’s silly and sexy and is sure to have you balling your eyes out in one particular scene. It’s refreshing to see three female Asian leads in a ‘Hollywood’ movie and it’s something I hope we see more of!