BY LUNA LUNA MAGAZINE STAFF
So, everyone who writes for Luna Luna comes from some mystical, aesthetically-charged world of hazy afternoon sunlight and magical realism and intoxicating desire. This is proven by the staff’s delicious cinematic choices. So, dear readers, we offer to you this compendium of cinema’s (and TV’s) most amazing female friendships. Many of these films showcase friendship as something absolutely wonderful, but there are many selections (like My Summer of Love), that venture into the dark, toxic edge of the female friendship woodland. Enjoy. xo
1. Thelma and Louise, just because they are so loyal to each other that they would sacrifice anything, even themselves, for their platonic love. It shows us how true love doesn’t have to be romantic. And Lydia and Barbara (Geena Davis) in Beetlejuice, because Lydia finds a cool mother figure that she lacked before, and Barbara finds the daughter she can’t have.
— Joanna Valente
2. The sisters in Spider Baby because they looked out for each other and were both kinda evil in an adorable way. I love the bond that the sisters in Spider Baby have. They share a dark secret that ties them together. They watch each others' backs and they forgive each others' transgressions. Even murder is forgiveable. Blood is thicker than water. There is something very touching and beautiful about that. I envy them.
— Leza Cantoral
3. The girls in Foxfire because I want a girl gang. I still have to read the novel! Firefox chronicles the ups and downs of a female friendship through traumatic experiences and identity. The girl group dynamic is infectious, admirable, and evolves through a coming of age
— Stephanie Valente
4. Big Boo and Pennsatucky. Because they both show their strengths and vulnerabilities, accept criticism and advice, and are willing to see each others' brilliance and faults. And they’re hilarious.
— Lynsey G.
5. Xena and Gabrielle because they are such badasses but very silly and also vulnerable and genuine only with one another…And also they are totally in love, so maybe not friends so much?
— Lynsey G.
6. Bound. Violet (Jennifer Tilly), who longs to escape her relationship with her mafioso boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), enters into a clandestine affair with alluring ex-con Corky (Gina Gershon), and the two women hatch a scheme to steal $2 million of mafia money.
— Dallas Athent
7. Zoe and Kim, Abernathy and Lee, in Deathproof because they capture exactly what it’s like to be road tripping with your bffs. The conversations are a lot like convos I’ve had with my sister and friends, and the way Zoe and Kim look at each other when Abernathy says "let’s kill thus asshole" is a classic “OH DAYUM, GURL!” moment when your straight edge bff suddenly gets hardcore.
— Chris Martinez
8. Has anyone mentioned Mystic Pizza (1988)? I know it’s kind of "80s," but the women in the movie are really wonderful. Annabeth Gish, a relatively unknown Julia Roberts, and the absolutely genius Lili Taylor grow up together in a small Connecticut town flinging pizza. Despite the fact that in this tiny seaside town, they all manage to dig up massive amounts of boy drama, they keep coming back to each other. I love movies about women that are able to keep the focus on the women. I’ve seen this movie 100 times and I cry every time.
— Stephanie Spiro
9. Writer/director Nicole Holofcener is one of my favorite filmmakers because she’s so good at digging up all the intricacies and bizarreness and depth and sweetness and mess of female relationships and not shifting focus onto other things. Her movie, Walking and Talking (1996), is just so moving on so many levels. It "gets" female friendships. It ends with a wedding, but we don’t see the wedding; we just see the women (Catherine Keener and Anne Heche) walking off into some metaphorical sunset together. Also, Keener is magic. Always.
— Stephanie Spiro
10. The Witches of Eastwick was the favorite sleepover film of me and my childhood friends as we were on the cusp of puberty. The movie inspired and empowered us. We saw what the power of women working together and dreaming together looks like. We wanted to be witches. We loved watching these women defeat the manipulative men who tried to use them and divide them.
— Leza Cantoral
11. Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits is one of my favorite books of all time. I’m not sure why in the hell they remade the movie with basically an all-white cast, but I do absolutely love the magical way the sisters are bound. The book is a tremendous, stunning tale of four generations (of women, basically) that live with an internal magic that fights against politics, machismo, sorrow and even death.
— Lisa Marie Basile
12. Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994) is based on a true story. It’s so lush and completely horrific. It was Kate Winslet’s first role. The girls (Winslet & Melanie Lynskey) get so lost in each other, and their connectedness and bond is so complete, they fall into a crazy beautiful imaginary magic that quickly shifts from gorgeous to violent.
— Stephanie Spiro
13. Emily Watson and Katrin Cartlidge in Breaking the Waves (the absolute love and commitment there, despite mental & spiritual turmoil & toweringly oppressive social persecution).
— Lisa Flowers
14. Miranda and Sara in Picnic at Hanging Rock (the purity and heartbreak of first love, overshadowed by the former’s impending doom).
— Lisa A. Flowers
15. The protagonist and her traveling friend in Catherine Breillat’s Sleeping Beauty (two very different worlds colliding, one of them dangerous, and the bond of friendship triumphing).
— Lisa Flowers
16. Diane and Camilla in Mulholland Drive.
— Lisa Flowers
17. Little Women has always been an inspiring story for me. All the sisters are different types, but they love each other and work together anyway. My favorite part of Little Women is the newspaper The Pickwick Papers that they write together. I love how they take it so seriously. That is the story that really made me want to be a writer. I was able to picture it because of Jo March.
— Leza Cantoral
18. I love the friendship between Wynona Rider's character and Angelina Jolie's in Girl Interrupted. They’re both fucked up in different ways but in the end they bring out something in each other. They are each others catalysts. Wynona grows some balls and Angelina gets some heart. It’s beautiful.
— Leza Cantoral
19. Cracks with Eva Green, Juno Temple, María Valverde, and Imogen Poots. Creepy 1930s boarding school in England. Sexuality, desire, power, jealousy, abuse. The dark side of being a woman.
20. The Dreamlife of Angels (1998), starring Élodie Bouchez and Natacha Régnier, is a fascinating, gritty character study of two women friends. Elodie Bouchez reminds me of a french Ruby Rose.
— Stephanie Spiro
21. Spoken like a cliche Southern girl...The women of Steel Magnolias. The friendship spans different generations and I like the diversity of age and enhances and informs their relationships.
— Trista Edwards
22. Selma and Cathy in Dancer in the Dark.
— Emma Eden Ramos
23. Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman in Persona: It’s maybe the MOST essential movie about women maybe ever. Bergman astounds me! The way the women in the film drift in and out of each other is spellbinding, heartbreaking, and so real. I love they create personas for themselves and then swap personas (Liv is an actress playing an actress in the film). In most of the film’s memorable stills, they look like beautiful chimeras of one another, if that’s even possible. And they’re rendered as 2-headed in the movie poster—universal, glued together, and distinctly separate.
— Stephanie Spiro
24. I’m tempted to mention Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson in Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers (because they stuck together to the end) but not sure if that counts.
— Lisa A. Flowers
25. I am gonna be cheesy by saying Lorelai Gilmore and Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls. I guess because I’d always wanted to have a friendship that close to my mother, not just a mother to daughter relationship, but an actual friendship. It would be something I’d strive for in the future when I would have a child of my own.
— Nadia Gerassimenko
26. Buffy and Willow—through life, death, demons, witches, vampires, lovers, straight, gay, strength and damage—they kicked ASS together! We need more Buffy.
— Liz Axelrod
27. The mother and daughter from Terms of Endearment. Their friendship is explosive. They seem to clash all the time, yet they know they love each other and they know they’ll always have each other. And Beaches. Two friends who become best of friends since childhood, but who seem to drift apart as they get older, yet they still love each other even though their friendships is probably long time dead.
— Nadia Gerassimenko
28. The sisters in The Virgin Suicides. They always loved one another, despite one another’s sadness. Whether they enabled it or comforted the sorrow, they lived it together until the end.
— Lisa Marie Basile
29. Mina and Lucy from Bram Stoker’s Dracula defined my early adulthood. I was captivated by Lucy’s domineering sexual attitude, and Mina’s coy naivety. They worked beautifully together, both weak to the powers of the night, but resilient in their own ways as lovers of love and desire.
— Lisa Marie Basile
30. My Summer of Love is my favorite depiction of female friendship. Always teetering on dissolution, the friendship is built on a mutual fascination, young sexual fumblings, mutual disgust in men, and, in the end, obsessive toxicity and projected wants and needs. Each girl is a vessel for the other, until both part, manically and painfully and violently.
— Lisa Marie Basile
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on our old site.