Marta (Vicky Luengo) is an aspiring photographer living in an upmarket part of town. When she loses her internship, she is forced to return home to the rougher working-class Barcelona neighbourhood of her youth. There she re-engages, in a complicated fashion, with the friends of her youth – friends who never moved away.

Carol Rodríguez Colás’ Girlfriends (Chavalas) is a 2021 Spanish mixture of comedy and drama dominated by themes of class and social mobility. While it does not deliver anything exceptionally memorable or innovative, it remains broadly effective and regularly quite funny. Thanks to a strong ensemble of actors, it is a comfortable place to visit and makes for a broadly entertaining 90 minutes.

Vicky Luengo is a solid lead as the conflicted Marta, who has worked hard to leave what she sees an an embarrassing part of town – Barcelona’s real-life Cornellà de Llobregat – and is now forced to live there and rebuild every bridge she had burned in the past. She does not just act as if she is better than her surroundings, she clearly believes it too. When Vicky is attempting to hide her situation from former art colleagues, Girlfriends is at its most cringe-worthy. When she is immersed among her old friends and is dragged unwillingly back to her teenage behaviours, the film is at its most effective and enjoyable. An ensemble of actors including Elisabet Casanovas, Carolina Yuste and Ángela Cervantes makes her bolshy circle of friends a comedic joy.

Rodríguez Colás, working for a screenplay by her sister Marina, infuses Vicky’s story with a strong sense of place that seems specific and distinctive. That it locates the narrative so effectively suggests that the key artistic problems are not in the production but the story. There is too great a reliance on over-familiar plot elements, and too little distinctiveness or original elements. What scenes of character that work – and work well – are largely due to the actors and how their performances have been directed.

The emergence of other recent Spanish and Catalan films dealing with class conflict and Barcelona’s poorer suburbs, notably the excellent El 47, do rather put an unfortunate focus on Girlfriends’ drawbacks. That said, there is a certain comfortable nature to Girlfriends. Its familiarity can have its own appeal for the viewer seeking less challenging entertainment. There is nothing wrong with that either. The film is what it is: good but not exceptional, and entertaining without being particularly memorable.