2013’s “Frances Ha”, directed by Noah Baumbach.
Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michal Zegen, Michael
Esper, Adam Driver, and Patrick Heusinger.
What is it about?
Gerwig stars as a 27 year old New York based dancer, who is
adrift in her life and struggling to find direction. We see her being best
friends with Mickey Sumner, and the 2 are inseparable until one day Sumner
announces she’s moving in with her boyfriend into his trendy apartment- which
sends Gerwig spiraling. Already having tenuous employment circumstances, she
jumps from living situation to living situation, desperate to fulfill some
vision of what being a New York based 20 something vagabond with limited life skills is like.
Things start to come to a head when Gerwig finds herself on a 2 day Paris trip,
due to wanting to appear a certain way in conversation at a dinner party. Will
she ever grow up, or is she doomed to spend her life in perpetual adultescence?
Why is it worth seeing?
Remember that stage in your life where you were growing up,
had graduated from college, and were both parts moving on from your friends and
they were moving on from you? Director/co-writer Noah Baumbach may, and he
certainly knows how to help us re-live it. Him and star/co-writer Gerwig do
their best to create a central character based out of New York who is sweetly naïve-
but ridiculous at every turn. Constantly insecure while telling others lies
about the success of her life, she maintains her façade, lying to perfect
strangers, her best friend, and even her parents west in California (actually
played by Gerwig’s real life parents). At times, she shuns good luck and
favours from well meaning people for reasons unclear to us.
“FH” performs like
a perfectly maintained jalopy, threatening to seize with awkwardness and
discomfort at the true to life dialogue, but it never abandons it’s focus or
love for our heroine’s plight. Helping out in spades, is the hip crew that comes along into Gerwig's life, such as Adam Driver (flaky but strong), and Michal Zegen (flakier but friendlier).
Shot in black and white to emphasize the low fi
aspects, “FH” is the perfect length of a movie, and as I watched I wondered if
the flick wraps itself up too nicely, or if this character could even find
success after watching her kill golden goose after goose- but it’s impossible
to feel anything but delight at the closing scene. At time hilarious, with a
perfectly punctuated ending, “Frances Ha” is a joy that I can’t wait to see
again.
Rating:
4.5/5
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