Support the Girls

New from Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Computer Chess), one of the US indie scene’s most versatile directors, is this outstanding, quietly feminist comedy set in a Hooters-style US bar that screened to acclaim at the BFI London Film Festival last year.

 

Intelligent, dependable Lisa (a terrific Regina Hall) is the last person you’d expect to find in a highway-side ‘sports bar with curves’, where waitresses serve the mostly male clientele in crop tops and shorts. But as general manager of Double Whammies, she’s nevertheless come to love the place and its customers. Warm and compassionate, she nurtures and protects her employees fiercely – but over the course of one trying day, finds her positivity tested in every direction.

 

It’s excellent company, a funny, big-hearted and startlingly wise film that delivers subtle and perceptive truths about corporate exploitation, racial and gender politics and the actual daily work of being a woman in a man’s world. Powered by Hall’s charismatic performance, it’s rounded out by a first-rate ensemble cast including Haley Lu Richardson, James Le Gros and Shayna McHayle.