Work sucks, I know. Support the Girls knows, too.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie One Battle After Another has an eclectic cast, with leading man Leonardo DiCaprio supported by Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, newcomer Chase Infiniti, musician Alana Haim, Regina Hall, and rapper Shayna McHayle (also known as Junglepussy). Penn and Haim have previously shared the screen in Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, but Hall and McHayle go further back: They’re both cast members from the 2018 dramedy Support the Girls, one of the least-seen among the best American films of the 2010s. Both performers are good in One Battle, but they’re not the focus of the movie. Support the Girls gives them more to do.
At the time, Support the Girls was the latest pivot from indie filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, who started in the ultra-low-budget “mumblecore” movement of 2000s before moving into more experimental territory with the period curio Computer Chess and attempting something like a normal rom-com with the sweetly odd Results. In some ways, Support the Girls swings back to Bujalski’s original mission of introducing some naturalism back into cinema, favoring character and behavior over plot. But it’s also more polished and accessible than anything he made leading up to it.
Why Watch Support the Girls Tonight?
There aren’t a lot of mainstream movies that capture the day-to-day experience of normal, non-glamorous work, maybe because of the understandable perception that audiences wouldn’t be all that jazzed to see a movie replicate the tedium, frustrations, and complications of everyday life on their downtime. What this line of thinking doesn’t consider is how cathartic it can be to see a movie acknowledge these challenges without amping them up into melodrama.
