Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, an indie workplace comedy set in Hooters-adjacent bar and grill was virtually overlooked last year by critics and audiences alike, but both New York Times critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, singled it out as one of the few authentic representations of women’s experience among this year’s plethora of films that included Widows, The Wife, Suspiria, Can You Ever Forgive Me, etc. The last scene, featuring women screaming from a rooftop, even reminded Dargis of Marlon Brando screaming in Last Tango, so in a way it provides a fitting bookend for our Bertolucci series. — Peter Biskind
“If I had to pick one movie moment to sum up 2018, it would probably be the last scene of Support the Girls… screaming on a roof. Not in terror (as women onscreen so often do), but in rage, frustration and a kind of righteous, rebellious glee. They are venting and protesting, having endured an endless cycle of everyday racism, sexism and exploitation. As an ending, it feels triumphant and bleak at the same time…” — A.O.Scott, New York Times
“…Support the Girls leads with the lived-in, different truths of its characters, its feminism is [therefore] organic, not performative or programmatic.” — Manohla Dargis, New York Times
“The sharp-elbowed humor is laced with aching tenderness, tightrope-tense frustrations over money and love, and an underlying mix of social pathologies that bubbles through the show-biz surfaces…” — Richard Brody, New Yorker
directed by
Andrew Bujalski
Andrew Bujalski
written by
Andrew Bujalski
Andrew Bujalski
with
Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Dylan Gelula, Zoe Graham
Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Dylan Gelula, Zoe Graham
production company
Magnolia Pictures
Magnolia Pictures