'Girlfriend's Day' is the bleak Netflix comedy you need today
"Everybody needs to smile on Valentine's Day, the saddest holiday of the year," says Better Call Saul's Bob Odenkirk in an effort to pitch his new Netflix film, Girlfriend's Day.
That sentence speaks aptly to what Girlfriend's Day is and does; it's a dark comedy (often literally, shot in shades of gray that would make E.L. James jealous) with layers of lies, betrayal and absurdity -- the dark side of Valentine's Day on a film noir canvas.
In Girlfriend's Day, Odenkirk plays Ray Wentworth, a washed-up greeting card writer who used to rule his industry. When his state introduces a new holiday, Girlfriend's Day, Ray gets caught in the frenzy to write the perfect card, and entangled in a web of murder and conspiracy that he may not escape.
"I've never met anyone who knows anyone who knows where or how greeting cards are done. It lends itself to mystery."
The greeting card industry as depicted in Girlfriend's Day is life-and-death, an invented realm with its own rules and norms.
"Ultimately, [greeting cards] are about sentiment, they're about feeling," Odenkirk says. "And there's a feeling of mystery around them in...it's very interesting because it's a real thing, it's not made up, and yet I've never met anyone who knows anyone who knows where or how greeting cards are done. It lends itself to mystery."
The high-stakes world of Girlfriend's Day, he notes, introduces a greeting card industry with rivalries, stigmas and a status quo all its own.
"I think one of the biggest things for me was to create a world that was a little heightened and just left of center so that it wasn’t grounded in being entirely naturalistic," said Stephenson, whose previous filmography includes documentary work. "We play it straight. There's no irony. We didn’t want to create a parody."
The film was written by Odenkirk and Eric Hoffman, the latter of whom wrote a first draft with Zlotorynski as Odenkirk was wrapping up Mr. Show with Bob and David in 1999. All three of them contributed to the final script. The filmmakers were inspired by film noir and dark comedies, particularly Chinatown and shades of The Big Lebowski.
"Eventually, Netflix got behind the project, and they couldn’t have been a more creatively supportive partner," Stephenson says. "They do have to uphold the values of their brand for viewers, which is why they’ve become so strong over the years in the original content, in that taking a risk is ultimately what it comes down to. And the audiences are responding."
Ray sometimes has the humorous deflection and demeanor of Jimmy McGill on Better Call Saul, but Odenkirk stresses that these characters are only similar on the surface.
"The character of Ray...is an incredibly embittered misanthrope who hates all people and has no love in his life and is actively chasing love away with a grudge against it," Odenkirk says. "The character of Jimmy McGill is strangely a very innocent and sweet-hearted character."
"Most rom-coms are way too smarmy," he adds. "I think a movie like this, which has got a little bit of heart in it, buried under a whole lot of darkness and silliness, is going to potentially deprive you more than a typical rom-com and make you smile."
Girlfriend's Day is now streaming on Netflix.
Proma Khosla is a Senior Entertainment Reporter writing about all things TV, from ranking Bridgerton crushes to composer interviews and leading Mashable's stateside coverage of Bollywood and South Asian representation. You might also catch her hosting video explainers or on Mashable's TikTok and Reels, or tweeting silly thoughts from @promawhatup.
