Adult friendships can be difficult. Babes understands.

In one of the first scenes of the new comedy babesFree-spirited Eden (Ilana Glazer) gets down on her knees to take a look at her best friend’s vagina. Pragmatic Dawn (Michelle Buteau) goes into labor and Eden tries to gauge how far along she is to figure out if they can continue eating brunch or need to rush Dawn to the hospital. It’s immediately clear that director Pamela Adlon doesn’t hold back when it comes to the grittier details of pregnancy and birth, and that she exploits her comedic potential to the fullest.

This scene also illustrates what the film actually is: an honest look at the strain that adulthood puts on friendships, especially when life drags people down separate paths. Eden and Dawn’s relationship feels authentic – their updates on the toilet routine, their extended conversation where all they say is “Bitch!” in various tones, Eden immediately volunteered to buy Dawn sushi for her first meal after giving birth. It made me nod along and think Ha ha, I feel the same way with my best friends.

This also means that I thought during their arguments with each other Oh no, I feel the same way too. I never got mad because my girlfriend showed it to my child The Omen, as Eden does to one of Dawn’s children, causing him to write demonic symbols on his bedroom wall and scaring off the new nanny. But I get frustrated when my friends’ weekend plans don’t align because one of us has a committed commitment that the other just doesn’t understand. Adlon keeps Dawn and Eden’s frustrations grounded (albeit with some hilarious, over-the-top incidents) so they never escalate to the point of destroying their friendship. This only makes their complaints resonate even more.

Image: Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection

Eden and Dawn have been best friends since childhood. Even though Dawn is a married mother of two and Eden is single and living her best, commitment-free life, they still make time for each other, even if it means Eden has a four-train journey across New York City when she Dawn wants to meet her for their annual Thanksgiving tradition of watching a movie in the theater.

When Eden becomes pregnant after a one-night stand, she decides to keep the baby – much to everyone’s surprise. Dawn promises to support her. But Dawn has her own life to deal with, with her family, her work, and her marriage, and she can’t always be there when Eden needs her. And Eden admittedly needs her constantly for appointments and other pregnancy-related things since she doesn’t have many other meaningful relationships in her life, especially with other parents. The tension brings buried frustrations to light; Eden doesn’t admit it at first, but she feels abandoned and betrayed because Dawn and her husband have moved to Manhattan, away from Astoria, Queens, where she and Dawn grew up.

As someone who recently moved to a different district than most of her friends, I felt this struggle so deeply. Instead of walking 10 minutes to meet up, my friends and I now have to find a midpoint or else use a stupid number of moves. (Seriously, why doesn’t the M train connect Queens and Brooklyn?!) I’m happy with my move; It was the right decision for me and my partner. Likewise, Dawn moved because it was the right choice for her to live in a beautiful sandstone house that would accommodate her entire family.

Image: Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection

But finally Eden admits that she is sad. Dawn never thought about her feelings when she took this step. In that moment, I was confronted with a fact that I tried to ignore: I also didn’t think about how far away I would be from my closest friends if I moved, and I didn’t think about the toll it would take on me Relationships. I insisted that the move made sense overall because it was exactly what me and my partner wanted. Socially, we tend to accept that people should consult their spouse, immediate family, and workplace and no one else when moving. But with babes

Sitcoms like Friends or How I Met your mother I have a very rose-tinted idea of ​​how friendship works for people in their 20s and 30s, where people’s lives revolve around a close-knit group of friends who somehow all have free schedules and live in the same neighborhood. But actual adulthood is busy! And sometimes you have to take four trains to get to a convenient meeting point on a holiday weekend. Your priorities begin to shift and may not align with your friends’ priorities.

It’s a slow burden, but maybe a friend starts a family so he can no longer afford the rent in New York City; perhaps someone else has joined a club and their weekends are full of commitments; Maybe someone else insists on staying in Bushwick, even though they live in a tiny apartment (though rent is stabilized!) and have outgrown the trendy nightlife. Those frequent weekend get-togethers are becoming increasingly rare, a fact that you try to ignore because you love your friends so much, but that ultimately changes your relationship.

Image: Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection

Different than in Bridesmaidswhere the tension escalates into a huge argument that ends the relationship, Adlon records babes is that in most cases a fight with a best friend doesn’t mean that you completely banish them from your life. Even when Dawn and Eden argue – and their personal frustrations escalate into pretty big disappointments – they never stop being friends or talking to each other. When friends fight in movies, it usually involves a big, dramatic declaration that the friendship is over, sometimes accompanied by an angsty “life without each other” montage to really drive home the point that they’re not talking. But in babes

babesIts take on adult friendships isn’t idyllic, but neither is it an over-the-top drama that could easily be dismissed as exaggerated, unreal film fiction. Having an argument with a friend that will only somehow be resolved if you continue to participate in each other’s lives feels much more real, especially when that argument is built on a beautifully realized tension in which neither side is represented incorrect exactly, but none of them are correct either. At the core, babes is a love story between Eden and Dawn, two best friends who struggle to maintain their friendship as adulthood threatens to tear them apart. Adlon never lets us doubt that these women mean a lot to each other.

It’s telling that this film never aims to find romance for Eden in order to mend her relationship with Dawn. Dawn is married and her husband is incredibly supportive, but Eden doesn’t magically find a similar partner who will show her the importance of family or who will treat her friendship with Dawn as a secondary consideration. A smaller film could make Eden realize that her new baby and possible new boyfriend are her priorities now, and tell Dawn that she finally understands where Dawn is coming from. Instead, Adlon explains that friendships are just as important as family.

Society constantly prioritizes romantic relationships and the nuclear family over friendships, something we see time and time again in the media. So it’s extremely satisfying to see a film celebrating the importance of friendship between adults and how both friends develop a new, realistic understanding of how their relationship developed – but didn’t dissolve. It’s an important perspective on friendship – one that’s often overlooked in a youth-oriented cultural landscape, but that points to something that many of us have experienced in some form or will experience at some point sooner than we’d like.

babes hits theaters on May 17th.