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The Girlfriends

Play trailer Poster for The Girlfriends 1955 1h 45m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 17 Reviews 83% Popcornmeter 500+ Ratings
This Italian drama, based on a novella by Cesare Pavese, follows Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago), a young woman from Rome who relocates to Turin to open a fashion boutique. Clelia soon meets and befriends a group of wealthy and cultured women, including the artistic Nene (Valentina Cortese) and the lively Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani). Tensions develop within the group, however, when Nene's fiancé, Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), becomes interested in one of the other women.
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The Girlfriends

Critics Reviews

View All (17) Critics Reviews
Richard Brody The New Yorker Antonioni turns a glossy romantic melodrama of modern prosperity inside out to reveal the essence of modernity itself. May 25, 2015 Full Review Mark Feeney Boston Globe Antonioni's ability to use the screen's illusion of depth or the way he lends an eloquence to the space between characters is a marvel. How he has these people stand is so much more expressive than anything they say. Rated: 3.5/4 Jul 1, 2010 Full Review A.O. Scott New York Times The expressive elegance of Antonioni's camera movements -- the way he glides around a scene, composing and recomposing the human figures within it to suggest psychological patterns and unacknowledged erotic connections -- still has the power to amaze. Rated: 5/5 Jun 18, 2010 Full Review Jeremy Carr Vague Visages Antonioni further bridges the gap between comparatively conservative melodrama and the groundbreaking narrative and visual abstraction he would soon unleash... Nov 15, 2023 Full Review Nicholas Bell IONCINEMA.com Significant observations of alienation in bourgeois tendencies makes revisiting Le Amiche considerably enjoyable. Rated: 3.5/5 Oct 8, 2020 Full Review Dwight MacDonald Esquire Magazine Redeemed by Antonioni's talent for episodes: the dismal picnic, the row in the restaurant, redecorating the apartment; and by his clever cutting and photography for character. Jul 23, 2019 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (21) audience reviews
Vusal I Lots of drama. Break of friendship. Loss of love and finding again the same love or just understanding of power of money? I don`t think Lorenzo came back to Nene due to money or famous. It is all about nature of men. Oh Rosetta, pretty girl. Lorenzo between Nene and Rosetta, with Nene mostly talking, is one of the more startling things about the film. Again, a lot of this could be construed as soap-opera stuff: she sleeps with him, he sleeps with her, she's jealous of her, she's spiteful of her, so on and so on. But that one scene, where Nene tells Rosetta off, is powerful because it's not as over the top as one might expect. Ah this film! Anyway, this film was so beautiful, sweet and native. I liked it! It is actually the first day of 2020, new decade, and I decided to watch some good films, then I saw in my library "3 monkeys" by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and this Le Amiche. When I saw this film s made by Michelangelo, I just sit in front of monitor to watch it! I read it was made by the magnificent director in his early career years. a Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/02/20 Full Review Audience Member good 'art house' drama Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member Michelangelo Antonioni gave the world this muted melodrama about urban females dealing with boorish men, banal modern life and the occasional suicide attempt. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/25/23 Full Review Audience Member Antonioni's 1950's films adhere more consistently to narrative conventions than his films of the 60's; however, Le Amiche's plot still tends to wander. We are led to identify with Clelia, who is visiting Turin from Rome in order to set up a dressmaker's salon. In Turin, she falls in with a group of women after discovering a failed suicide in an adjacent hotel room. Antonioni then demonstrates, through a variety of social situations, just how bitchy and alienating this social circle is to those within it. Even the woman who attempted suicide readily betrays one of her friends by having an affair with her husband (later to appear as Sandro in L'Avventura, a film that builds on and extends the themes here). But the husband is too self-concerned to be able to see how his actions will affect either of the women (wife and friend) with whom he becomes involved. Antonioni's attention to the various characters fluctuates but none gain too much depth, apart from Clelia who seems sympathetic but ultimately ambivalent toward these new "friends" in Turin. As he would continue to do throughout his career, Antonioni depicts the idle rich as pursuing lives of meaninglessness and cruelty; as a film, Le Amiche represents one more step on the road toward the exciting levels of abstraction he would achieve later on to convey this theme. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Lesser Antonioni, but has some lovely sequences that hint at things to come later in his career. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Soapy early Antonioni film doesn't really go anywhere or say very much. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Girlfriends

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Cast & Crew

La Strada 98% 93% La Strada Watchlist The Rose Tattoo 67% 73% The Rose Tattoo Watchlist Variety Lights 100% 71% Variety Lights Watchlist Lola Montes 82% 77% Lola Montes Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis This Italian drama, based on a novella by Cesare Pavese, follows Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago), a young woman from Rome who relocates to Turin to open a fashion boutique. Clelia soon meets and befriends a group of wealthy and cultured women, including the artistic Nene (Valentina Cortese) and the lively Mariella (Anna Maria Pancani). Tensions develop within the group, however, when Nene's fiancé, Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti), becomes interested in one of the other women.
Director
Michelangelo Antonioni
Genre
Drama
Original Language
Italian
Release Date (Streaming)
Jun 7, 2016
Box Office (Gross USA)
$63.2K
Runtime
1h 45m
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