Reseñas de la crítica

Fluent in the particularities of the milieu it inhabits, Bujalski has fashioned a humanist ode to worker solidarity, an illustration of inequality with considered political inclinations that is nevertheless refreshingly light on its feet.

At a detailed but breakneck 90 minutes, throwaway lines must incisively message subtext; hardly an expression, an exhalation, or a tonality is wasted. But when the film pauses, the performers deepen the silence.

Double Whammies . . . proves a perfect setting for Andrew Bujalski’s Wiesman-esque interest in the way people apprehend, navigate, and naturalize unspoken rules of engagement.

Drama is mainstream, porn is not. Mumblecore isn’t either, so Bujalski, who is now one of the best directors of actors in American filmmaking, has designed this unique, low-key film as a vehicle for Hall, the excellent actress from the Think Like a Man and Scary Movie movies who was overshadowed by the discovery of Tiffany Haddish in Girls Trip.

Above all, Support the Girls stands out as a rare nearly all-female workplace comedy that explores a relationship few movies have bothered to document: the bond between a good small-business manager and her (mostly) loyal staff.

Lisa, Maci, and Danyelle resemble the strong working-class women you actually know rather than the pink-pussy-hat-wearing, bourgeois stereotypes pretending “resistance.”

In such an erratic environment, immediate and direct choices must be made, and Bujalski, true to his mumblecore roots in films like Funny Ha Ha and Beeswax, makes proficient use of the most unobtrusive of formal means.

As I watched Support the Girls, I wondered if this is what makes the film feel so tactile and specific. What Bujalski seems to understand, in the plot he’s written for these women and in the nimble, assertively democratic ways he documents their highs and lows, dreams and successes, is the impossibility of survival without support.

In case I haven’t made this clear, it’s pretty great: both cathartic and anti-cathartic, crammed with numerous tossed off punchlines, a rendering of our dreadful present that doesn’t bludgeon.

As the details gather, thickening the story, what seemed like drift is revealed as textured realism. Mr. Bujalski’s touch is so light that it can be easy to miss what he’s doing. . . . Mr. Bujalski may not be waving social-issue flags, but this movie is, among other things, also about female friendship as a bulwark against alienated labor.

Bujalski has utilized this business as a rich backdrop for one of the year’s most unusual films: a day-in-the-life character portrait of a working woman of color that is frequently hilarious yet firmly rooted in its protagonist’s undeniable melancholia.

Bujalski frames most of Support the Girls as an almost real-time delineation of chaos, but his storytelling elegance — delicate, nearly invisible foreshadowing; cogent evocations of backstory — adds reflective layers to the surface anarchy.