In Frances Ha, co-writers, co-members of the newest indie darling couple, and respective director and star Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, preserve all the good that the word “quirky” used to possess before Zooey Deschanel showed up and ruined everything. Gerwig effortlessly inhabits Frances, a 27 year old “dancer” who slowly realizes that her dance apprenticeship (and subsequently each and every plan she had for her future) may not be leading anywhere at the same time that her best friend (they’re practically the same person), Sophie (Mickey Summer), embarks on a grown up relationship with a bro-y Wall Street guy who goes by “Patch,” says things like, “I gotta take a leak,” and can afford things like houses.
Frances Ha is lighter than Baumbach’s other films, which include the sulky Greenberg and the even more tragically sulky The Squid and the Whale, but it’s no less truthful. The facts that it’s in black and white and very New York have garnered Woody Allen comparisons, and in small ways, it’s there, but the humor is different and entirely new. The Girls issue has arisen too; it seems if the subject is a lost twenty-something trying to navigate life, it must have spawned from the success of that desperate cupcake, Lena Dunham. But Frances is the best and most realistic thing twenty-somethings are (and I know this because I am one of them): really confused. She is not cripplingly neurotic, like Annie Hall, and not overtly sad, entitled and critical, like Hannah Horvath. Rather, Frances cannot grasp why things can’t just stay good, stay the way they were. At once, she actively refuses to let go of the ideal of those good ol’ college days and is reluctantly thrown into dark waters, where everyone else is sopping wet and paddling hard to try to move forward – Sophie moves out of their apartment, finds a ridiculous boyfriend and starts an even more ridiculous blog with him, the other dancers in her company move forward with their careers, but Frances sticks herself in a bubble, content to meander, and subconsciously does whatever she can to preserve her past ideal and float along dry and unscathed. Of course, bubbles only last so long before they pop.
I laughed out loud a lot in Frances Ha, and these laughs meant several things. There was the, “HAHA this is hysterical because I know someone who is just like Frances, obsessed with talking about college even though we’ve graduated and should be moving on!” And there was the, “HAHA this is terrifying because I said that EXACT SENTENCE last week!” And also the “HAHA this is a thing about being in your twenties that is so true it hurts and I have to laugh at it because the other option is to cry about it and that’s no fun!” Not that there is a lot to actually cry about. Being in your twenties is hard, but it could be worse. Frances’ roommate Benji (the small and bouncy Michael Zegen) points out to her when she’s lamenting her financial situation that she’s not really poor, and that it’s an insult to “actual poor people” to call herself poor. I swear to any of the people who read this who aren’t in their twenties and don’t already know this, these conversations happen all the time.
Frances is for the audience a cute and quotable digest of all of the feelings that happen at this point in your life. Some of the action is Woody Allen-ish in its absurdity; Frances’ life is jam-packed with quintessential coming of age experiences, but not in a bad or cliché way. Because of the heightened reality, Frances becomes a vessel to relay every experience that you possibly could and would go through in this time in your life, from finding yourself at an adult dinner party with nothing to contribute to not taking full advantage of your time abroad to choosing food and friends over running errands to going home to your family for the holidays, having a wonderful time despite getting frustrated by your nagging mom, and then reluctantly leaving all that love and go back to figuring things out on your own.
Frances Ha is full of humor and hope and seeming misadventures that are valuable and are really just part of the process. I think. I don’t know. I’m like, pretty sure. I’ll let you know when I turn 30.
Grade: A-