Motherhood as they had never explained it to you

What would have happened if Broad city had continued until Ilana and Abbi had turned thirty and were mothers? The answer is Peques, written and starring Ilana Glazer, the comedic whirlwind responsible for that cult series. Glazer no longer has Abbi Jacobson by her side, her colleague in that foundational fiction about the absurd misadventures of being twenty and living in New York, but she is very well accompanied. Directed by Pamela Adlon, creator of Better things, another autobiographical series about another type of female misadventures: those involved in being a divorced mother in charge of three daughters.

There is an evident connection between Glazer and Adlon, practitioners of a type of raw and crude comedy through which they explain diverse facets of the female experience without omitting the less flattering parts. If in Better things motherhood is described as an exhausting battle in which your daughters are your fiercest adversaries, in Peques the central theme is the mutation of friendship relationships when a baby appears. For obvious reasons, the film reflects those two fundamental series, and it is inevitable that the comparison ends up harming it: despite its brutally honest tone about the darker (and physically repulsive) sides of motherhood, the film is less narratively free than the fragmented Better things and more orthodox in its vindication of female friendship than the much more eccentric Broad city.