BFFs (Andrew Putschoegl, 2014): USA

Reviewed by Johanna Carlsson at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014

BFFs, Best Friends Forever. BFFs is a comedy movie about friendship, just as the title indicate. It is directed by Andrew Putschoegl and the story is written by the two main characters Andrea Grano and Tara Karsian. I saw the movie at Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara and after the movie ended there was a Q&A with the director and the main characters. They told us about how they had written the story and then found this director who wanted to work with their movie. They only had 15 days to shoot the movie. Even thou they did not have much time to shoot the movie, they succeeded in making a good and funny movie.

The movie is about two best friends, Samantha (played by Andrea Grano) and Kat (played by Tara Karsian). Samantha and Kat have been friends for a long time and are close to each other. Kat have had problems with relationships through her life and she had recently been breaking up with a man after three years together. The first scene in the movie is on Kats birthday and families and friends are sitting around a table. From Kats mum, Kat is given a weekend on a couple’s weekend workshop named “Closer to closeness”. Kat do not know what to do since her relationship with the latest man is over and she has no one else to come. But Samantha has an idea! She thinks that she and Kat should go together and pretend to be couple with problems. After a little convincing, Kat goes along with it. Kat and Samantha drives up to the place where the workshop is going to be. It is a beautiful and relaxing place and the owners are very welcoming. There are other couples there who also are going to attend the weekend workshop. They are doing exercises together and by their own, talking, eating and just relax. They seem to enjoy the weekend but then something unexpected is happening. What is going to happen now and are they going to make it through and stay as the good friends they are?

I really liked this movie. Actually, it was one of the best I saw during the festival. I think that the actors did a very good job. I liked how they used body languages and face expressions to show their feelings. The two main characters are good friends in real life and this was something that you could see in the movie. They seem to have a really good connection between each other and their friendship seemed natural and real. The place where they shoot it was really beautiful (fun fact: The place where they were filming is the same as Britney Spears went to rehab). This beautiful place contributed to get the feeling of a relaxing and quite place.

The movie made me laugh several times and it was a feel good movie. Since everything looked so natural to the actors I think they successfully got you connected with their feelings. When something went wrong you felt how you wanted to do something to help them and when everything was good, you felt how the happiness came to you and you also became happy. I walked out from the theatre with a smile on my face after seeing BFFs and it is a movie a strongly recommend for people to see!