Yeah The Girls

This mini focus season looks at the fresh perspectives Australian filmmakers have brought to the romantic-comedy, one of the most enduring genres of cinema.

“What, like it’s hard?” From pop music to romantic comedies, often culture that presents as overtly feminine is undermined and not taken seriously. Yet from the early 1900s and the silent short films of pioneering female filmmakers like Mabel Normand to the breakthrough success of Girls Trip (2017), the rom-com has long been a sleeper vessel for more authentic and inclusive representation.

Rom-coms with an Australian perspective are no different, whether that’s re-centering a woman’s career drive and female friendships like Robert Luketic’s Legally Blonde (2001) or using the conventions of the genre to look at Indigenous identity with Top End Wedding (2019). Aussie Own Voices filmmakers have taken the conventions of one of cinema’s oldest genres and retooled them to tell modern stories, like coming-of-age lesbian rom-com Ellie And Abbie (And Ellie’s Dead Aunt) (2020). So few things in life have a guaranteed happy ending yet just because the rom-com can make us feel good, doesn’t make it any less important.

– Maria Lewis, Assistant Curator

The Yeah The Girls season features Top End Wedding (2019), Legally Blonde (2001), Titsiana Booberini (1997) and Ellie And Abbie (And Ellie’s Dead Aunt) (2020).