Bechdel Test Movie List

You almost never see women alone together and when you do, they just talk about dudes.

A friend of mine recently told me about the Bechdel Test and I was curious to see how common it is for a Hollywood film to pass the Test...and now I feel compelled to stick up for Friends with Kids. Does it fail the letter of the test? Possibly. It was several months ago that I saw the film, I can't remember the details of every conversation that the characters have. But the film is undeniably within the spirit of the Test, which, it seems to me, is about identifying films with richly drawn female characters who are defined by more than their relationship to a male character. Friends with Kids is a rare example of a Hollywood film that is written by, directed by and starring a woman. Jennifer Westfeldt did a wonderful job with it. As the title indicates, the film is primarily about romantic relationships, so it should come as no surprise that the female characters talk about men a lot (just as the male characters talk about women a lot). But why should this be reason enough to dismiss the film as somehow anti-feminist? The fact that the movie exists at all is a testament to a woman succeeding in a male-dominated Hollywood system. Although it is a story in which female/male romantic relationships are prominent, the entire story is told from a female perspective. It's slightly absurd to see that a Vin Diesel car racing film like Fast Five passes the Bechdel Test, but Friends with Kids doesn't. A result like that causes me to wonder what the true value of Bechdel Test is, if it would have the effect of steering feminist-minded viewers away from a piece of female-driven storytelling like Friends with Kids, and towards Fast Five instead. Anyways, the point of this post isn't to knock the Test. It's to respectfully disagree with the commenter who caused this film to be labeled a "failure" as defined by the parameters of the Test, when I believe that a consideration of the film's characters within the storytelling context that Westfeldt chose would cause most viewers to conclude that Friends with Kids is very much in line with the spirit of the Test.

This definitely has conversations between the three main female characters (and even a quick one between Julie and Megan Fox's character, Mary Jane, about her thongs): one of them is in the trailer. Men are present, though. Does that invalidate the conversation?

Leslie: I don't think they had any idea how hard any of this was going to be.
Missy: Yeah, they're probably in hell.

I've updated the rating from 2/3 to 3/3.