





FRANCES HA B+
USA (86 mi) 2012
d: Noah Baumbach Official site
A smaller film from Baumbach, a drama of restless anxiety,
much like the city of New York movies of Woody Allen with Diane Keaton in the
70’s like ANNIE HALL (1977) and MANHATTAN (1979), shot in the supposedly more
realistic medium of Black and White by Sam Levy, where the combustible energy
of the city is as much a character as any of the people living in it, a film
that can briefly be described as a story that pays tribute to life in your 20’s
and to New York City. While it’s true,
Baumbach mostly makes films about the loathsome lives of dissatisfied middle to
upper class white people, who one supposes have their own unique problems
dealing with the emptiness and boredom of their lives while others struggle
with the crippling effects of an actual financial crisis, his films are often
difficult to sit through because of the undercurrent of unpleasantness in the
bitingly sarcastic wit on display, showing us with pinpoint accuracy the face
of middle class disillusionment. One of
the best writers working today, he has a special ear for dialogue that gives
the film a theatrical effect, like a modernist stage play, where perhaps the
closest today may be Richard Linklater’s conversational romance trilogy of Before
Sunrise (1995), Before
Sunset (2004), and Before
Midnight (2013). An interesting
collaboration brought this together, as co-writers Baumbach and Gerwig have
been dating since late 2011, where their differing perspectives on each other’s
age group, as he’s 14 year older, only make things more interesting. Quite a contrast to Ben Stiller’s detestable
lead in Greenberg
(2010), or nearly all of Baumbach’s previous self-loathing lead roles, where
according to Helen Gramates, former Chicago Film Festival programmer, “Baumbach
couldn't really make the character loathsome or unsympathetic if his girlfriend
is portraying/writing her!”
Greta Gerwig rose to prominence through the Mumblecore
movement, starring in Joe Swanberg movies, like NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS (2008),
which she co-wrote, directed, and starred with Swanberg before becoming the
*it* girl of indie films, similar to Chloë Sevigny in the 90’s, working with
Whit Stillman in Damsels
in Distress (2011), the more mainstream Lola
Versus (2012), and Woody Allen in To
Rome With Love (2012). In each she
plays a variation on the independent woman role originated by Keaton, vibrantly
energetic, intellectually curious, but always appearing neurotic, never at ease
with herself, where physically she’s a bit awkward and something of a klutz,
where in the storyline she’s continually challenged by the unwelcome effects of
making the wrong choices. A single girl
without any serious love interests, Gerwig as Frances is in nearly every scene
of the film, where her life is equally consumed by her roommate and best friend
Sophie (Mickey Sumner, Sting’s daughter), where they’d be lost and alone
without each other, considering themselves identical twins in mind and spirit,
though they’re nothing alike. While
Sophie has a stable job she likes working in a publishing house, Gerwig frets
about never having the kind of money her friends seem to have, supporting
herself with odd jobs as an apprentice dancer and part-time choreographer, but
never invited to join the dance company, simply filling in when there’s
available work, usually during holiday concerts. Though she thinks of herself as poor, quickly
corrected by a friend who claims “that’s an insult to actual poor people,”
she’s a college graduate whose parents live in the affluent suburbs of
Sacramento, California, where at some point she has to learn to stop tapping
into their resources whenever there’s a need to bail her out of financial
jams. Frances is in this in-between
stage of prolonged childhood and becoming a young adult.
When Sophie announces she’s moving out of the apartment to
move in with a rich but relatively unlikable guy from Wall Street named Patch
(Patrick Heusinger), who says things like (Frances says in a gruff monotone
voice) “I gotta take a leak,” this leaves Frances without a home, going into a
free-fall of one mini-disaster after another, each one more embarrassing than
the last. The ability to stand on her
own does not seem to be one of her many talents, but she’s never at a loss for
words, or an interesting opinion, turning into something of a pathological liar
creating a more interesting fake life to cover her abysmally sad real one. Stylistically, the film resembles the
seemingly improvisational nature of the French New Wave, where the quirky state
of mind of Frances is expressed throughout by familiar refrains of the Georges
Delerue music from KING OF HEARTS (1966), adding an air of innocence and
something adorably timeless about Frances, whose playful sense of humor masks
her bundle of nerves and somewhat self-chosen insecurity, yet unlike Sophie, she’s
not afraid to take risks and refuses to surrender her youthful ideals. One sequence in particular shows Frances
twirling, dancing, and leaping through the streets of New York to the music of
David Bowie’s “Modern Love,” Frances Ha [2013] - Dance in
the street - YouTube (1:08), paying homage to Denis Levant in the Léos
Carax film Mauvais
Sang (Bad Blood) (1986), seen here, Modern
Love YouTube (2:01), although Levant sprints to the right in an endlessly
long, unbroken shot at night while Gerwig runs to the left in much less
impressive fashion during the day with several noticeable edits. So while this smaller film may not live up to
the artistic ideal of Carax or cinema greatness, Frances proves that
misadventures are valuable life experiences and are part of the growing
process, where in her own small way she remains true to herself. Small victories are worth savoring, where you
don’t always have to risk Don Quixote
disillusionment and defeat by insisting upon fighting the larger and unwinnable
battles.
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