It is easier than one might think to identify a lonely girl at the movies. Often she will wait for the dvd, so she can watch it on Netflix in the privacy of her lonely girl cocoon, but if the time is right, you just might see her at the theatre. She is likely to be either alone or with a lonely girl friend, and they will be easily identifiable by their lonely girl clothes (the Lonely Girl Guide to All Things Sartorial is still in the works, but proving to be more complicated than previously thought; please, have patience.)
Several film genres can of course be rejected outright as viewing fare for the lonely girl: action/adventure, romantic comedy, horror, unless any of these films are foreign, in which case there is a small possibility. The following represents a small handful of films which are likely to draw the attention of the lonely girl.
"Anne of Green Gables" (1985)/ "Anne of Avonlea" (1987)
This one should be obvious, but it's a good ruler to hold the rest of the films by. Any lonely girl worth her salt knows this miniseries backwards and forwards, and is only too happy to act out various scenes for the uninitiated, particularly the Barn Scene, the Bridge Scene, or any scene involving Minnie Mae Berry. It has everything: adapted from a treasured lonely girl book, a feisty orphan with red hair who is too smart and imaginative for her own good, and a boy who loves her steadfastly over many years while she is too busy being ridiculous to notice him. One easy test for finding a lonely girl is to lay your hands on a copy of the soundtrack. A true lonely girl will start crying halfway through the first track.
"Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain" (2001)
Strictly speaking, lonely girls generally do not look like they could double for Chanel models, but Audrey Tautou's inherent weirdness somehow makes us not hate her. Yes, the movie is so adorable as to border dangerously on the twee, but Amelie is the lonely girl we would all like to be: she's a bizarre wallflower with a secret yearning to be loved, and not only does she land the perfectly perfect Nino Quincampoix, she is finally able to balance her inner loneliness with outer compassion. And it's just so damned cute.
"In Between Days" (2006)
A funny little South Korean film about recent teenage immigrant Aimie and her best, and only, friend Tran. Aimie loves Tran to the point of getting a refund on her ESL classes to buy him an expensive bracelet. Tran loves Aimie to the point of pretending that he doesn't, because he is a typically lame teenage boy. They dance around the subject awkwardly until Tran tells Aimie he only wants to be friends. Aimie gets upset and sleeps with someone at a party, at which point Tran realizes that he has been acting like a huge loser. Lonely girls everywhere sigh in commiseration along with the Asobi Seksu soundtrack.
"Every Girl Should Be Married" (1948)
Retail clerk Annabel REALLY wants to get married. She decides that confirmed bachelor pediatrician Madison Brown will do quite nicely. The movie details her increasingly outrageous schemes to land him as he tries to fend off her advances. She's weird and awkward and painfully embarrassing. At the end, of course, he proposes. Bonus points for Betsy Drake, who played Annabel: Cary Grant, who played Madison, married her for real the next year. If only all lonely girls were so lucky.
"Heavenly Creatures" (1994)
Based on the icky true story of two young girls in New Zealand who got a little two close, Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet (Kate Winslet back in her chubby days, when, honestly, lonely girls liked her better) decide their only chance not to be separated is to murder Pauline's mother. Obviously. The girls spend most of their time obsessing about a dream world of their own invention where they frolic with film stars in a quasi-religious manner. Their parents have begun to worry about their possibly lesbian relationship and plan to keep them apart, so they work out their plan. They report that Juliet's mother has fallen and bumped her head, but she's obviously been beaten to death with a brick, so that doesn't really work. Bonus trivia: Juliet changed her name to Anne and become a successful detective novelist. Weird.
"Linda Linda Linda" (2005)
Four Japanese high school girls are keen to perform in the school cultural festival, but the singer quits the band just days before the competition. The only person they can interest in the job is a Korean exchange student with a shaky grasp of Japanese. The little group of outcasts (not all that realistic, as the Japanese girls are all J-pop stars, but they make convincing dorks) overcome ex-boyfriends, missed rehearsal times, and other lonely girl stuff to win the competition, at which they sing "Linda Linda Linda" by punk band The Blue Hearts, which makes it all worth it.
"Welcome to the Dollhouse" (1995)
I don't think I even need to explain this one. Anyone named Dawn Wiener is automatically entered into the Lonely Girl Hall of Fame. Bonus points for semi-inadvertently getting your sister kidnapped.
"L'Effrontée" (1985)
Lonely girl hero Charlotte Gainsbourg won a César award for playing 13-year-old Charlotte, whose drab motherless existence is livened up one summer by the arrival of a child prodigy, a classical pianist named Clara, whom she sees as her way out of life with a vaguely negligent father and a pesky neighbor girl named Lulu. Connections are missed, lines are crossed, Charlotte is nearly raped by an older boy, and Lulu almost dies, but it's the best of lonely girl worlds when it all turns out alright in the end.
"Hour of the Star" (1985)
Another entrant for the Hall of Fame is Macabea: she's a typist, a virgin, and she likes Coca-Cola. The only thing nicer than this film is the novel of the same name by Clarice Lispector. And I mean 'nicer' as in 'gut-wrenchingly painful and awkward and wrong'. Macabea is a lonely girl who never knows it, a girl who thinks she's being flirted with by a blind man, a girl who rides the subways for a good time, a great moon-faced girl who thinks anything can be cured by the purchase of a new lipstick. It's not a happy film, but neither are lonely girls much of the time. Almost nothing good happens at all, but Macabea's unfailing optimism can't help but make you feel a tiny bit better.
"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962)
The really awful, really wonderful, Grand Guignol film all about sisters Blanche and Jane, played by the eternally feuding Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. It's catty, it's cruel, it's grotesque, and you spend most of the film yelling at Blanche for not escaping the fifty or so times that she could have. Why do lonely girls like it? It's scary without being nightmare-inducing, the dialogue is fabulously outlandish, and it's a good thing to watch if you're ever having issues with your sister.
