Barcelona-based film-maker Zaida Carmona is the co-writer (alongside Marc Ferrer), director and star (playing an aspiring film-maker character named Zaida no less) of this winning lesbian sex comedy, set in Barcelona and featuring a roster of actors also mainly playing characters named after themselves. Who knows how much of it was inspired by actual events – but even if just a little bit of it is true, these women are clearly having way more fun than the rest of us.
Not that their lives don’t have ups and downs, especially Zaida herself. Back in Barcelona to flatsit the well-appointed home of one stable, early-to-bed couple who are off on holiday with their kids for three weeks, Zaida arrives in town freighting a broken heart, having been dumped and ghosted by (now) ex-girlfriend Gabriella (Bea Escribano). She’s keen to monologue about her despair and the perfidy of Gabriella to anyone who will listen, and the holiday-bound friends look like they can’t wait to get to the airport.
Luckily for Zaida, she meets up with her old friend Rocío (Rocío Saiz) who is in a new but fairly solid relationship with Lara (Alba Cros), a slightly more successful film-maker than Zaida (who has always felt attracted to Lara). The two keep crossing paths at the nearest cinematheque where they’re having an Eric Rohmer season, and the parallels between this feature and Rohmer’s delicately fashioned social-romantic comedies is not so subtly served up by the title in itself, a play on Rohmer’s 1987 film Boyfriends and Girlfriends. Rocío and Lara try to set up Zaida with pixie-like musician Aroa (Aroa Elvira) who has supposedly just broken up with vampish Julia (Thaïs Cuadreny), but that’s another complicated situation. Before long, Rocío is having an affair with Julia, Zaida is making out with Lara and Aroa, and everyone is very excited – meaning the torrent of dialogue goes by so fast the subtitles can barely keep up.
The end result is quite charming but also deeply, profoundly and unabashedly slight, and, like a Rohmer picture, about everything and nothing. Carmona and her crew don’t have the same resources as the French auteur, so the sound is wonky in spots, allowing the extremely low budget to show through like a bra strap under a tank top. But at least the producers either paid for a great soundtrack or managed to get great deals with indie musicians such as Christina Rosenvinge (who plays herself in the film) and other acts that contribute variously thrashy, trashy and adorable ditties that pepper the soundtrack.
• Girlfriends and Girlfriends is available from 28 June on Mubi.
