The feeling that your childhood ride-or-die will remain so is something that many of us – if not all – have experienced. But whether it’s through distance or altering priorities, it’s a common practice that adulthood (and everything that comes with growing up) can wedge itself between even the strongest of connections, and it’s that mentality that’s at the centre of Fwends, a raw, improvised-feeling dramedy from Australian director Sophie Somerville.
Adhering to the rhythm and language of Gen Z culture, whilst paying somewhat of an homage to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy, Fwends is a conversational film, focusing on Em (Emmanuelle Mattana), a Sydney-sider, who has taken a weekend off from her demanding job to visit bestie (?) Jessie (Melissa Gan) in Melbourne. We gather they were rather inseparable as kids, and they’ve certainly touched base with each other over the years, but it’s evident it’s been a while since they’ve really spent time together.
At first, it’s all the usual chit chat we expect – relationships and work updates – but, almost immediately, there’s an inherent sense of how off things feel between them as Jessie takes Em on something of an aimless journey around the city, claiming she’s taking her to a coffee spot, only to really not have any idea as to where she’s going; it isn’t a confident start for someone apparently engrained in the city. Em’s frustration is felt, and as sweet as Jessie is, we reciprocate Em’s nature in the moments wasted.
Nothing seems to improve over the course of the film’s 96 minutes, and when Em reveals she’s been sexually harassed at work, it really shifts their dynamic, with Jessie taken aback at the casualness that Em mentions it. It becomes clear that Em’s anger is simmering, and the script – penned by Somerville, Mattana and Gan (which probably explains how natural and improvised it all feels) – escalates as it lets Em and her opinions loose. For Jessie, she’s still recovering from a break-up, and through her own revelations we gather so much of her personality and social standing was tied to her ex, so she’s essentially alone in a big new city with no friends or support system to call her own.
There’s such sadness to both girls, and instead of Em and Jessie turning to each other and finding a sense of aid, they plant further seeds of distance, with one conversation piece where Jessie expresses her understanding of subjective and objective science to Em practically solidifying how far they’ve grown apart; Em’s defiance in this sequence proving quite taxing to endure in the manner she talks down to (and at) Jessie. For a film with such a playful take on the friends term, Fwends prove neither overtly friendly or remotely playful.
Even as Em and Jessie take drugs to numb the disappointment of their night together – Jessie loses the keys to her apartment, so they opt for party favours to make the most of a Saturday night in Melbourne – there isn’t a levity that the film needs to lift us out of the feeling that these two girls are just delaying the inevitable. Movies about friendships don’t need to always adhere to a positivity and an eventual ending that “everything’s going to be okay”, but Fwends never really sells us on the fact that Em and Jessie were ever as close as it would like us to believe, so as they reveal their true feelings and even truer natures, Somerville isn’t navigating material that surprises us in its eventuality.
There’s no denying that Mattana and Gan deliver good performances. They feel like lived-in people, even if they don’t entirely endear us to want to get to know them beyond the minutes of the film, and a lot of their random humour and painful recounts feel like it stems from a real place. But the believability of their turns doesn’t translate into an easy likeability, and that’s ultimately what makes Fwends as taxing as it is, that these real, valid conversations (that we’ve probably all had in one capacity or another) aren’t conducted in a way that feel idiomatic to us as viewers.
Growing apart is truly a bittersweet reality. There’s the mourning of who you used to be with your supposed person, but the joy of growing into your own and seeing what the other can achieve. If Fwends gave us perhaps a stronger structure and two protagonists that weren’t so immediately disconnected, the impact of their trajectory might be felt stronger.
TWO STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Fwends is screening as part of this year’s Sydney Film Festival, running between June 4th and 15th, 2025. For more information head to the official SFF page.
