Female buddy film
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A female buddy film is a type of buddy film. In these films, women are the main characters and their friendships and relationships with each other drive the story. The plots of female buddy films can share the same concept of male buddy films—opposite personalities go on an adventure or journey of sorts—or they can concern an ensemble group of women. Female buddy films gained popularity in the 1960s from the emergence of the woman's film and the male buddy film genres.[1]
The main characters of female buddy films are women, and the film's events center on their situations. The main cast is often female, depending on the plot. Critic Hannah McGill of Sight & Sound wrote, "Films that centralise friendship between women and girls are thus always doing something slightly radical, whatever their other themes and content. They repudiate the message that women are adjuncts to men; they emphasise the fact that women and girls still exist when there are no men or boys in the room."[2]
Background
The buddy film was historically a genre limited to men and rooted in the literature and culture of America, with the fictional portrayal of male bonding in the United States tracing back to 19th-century author Mark Twain's characters Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, as well as Huck and Jim in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[3] The occurrence of one woman interacting with another in film was so rare that concepts like the Bechdel test originated as a means of measuring the representation of women in fiction.[2] Female buddy films appeared as early as the 1930s, with George Cukor's The Women and Gregory La Cava's Stage Door.[4] Other prominent examples include Dance, Girl, Dance (1940),[2] Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953),[5][2] The Group[4] (1966), and Daisies (1966).[6][2]
1991's Thelma & Louise remains one of the most notable female buddy films to date and had a similar impact on popular culture as buddy film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did in the late 1960s.[7][8] Similar films also paved the way for onscreen female friendships such as that between Amelia and Laura in Walking and Talking.[9] Though there are far fewer female buddy films than there are male buddy films,[10] their frequency has increased in conjunction with rising numbers of women in production and creative roles.[11][2]
