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| Co-writer/star Greta Gerwig brings complexity to the role of Frances. |
It’s easy to imagine most people reacting one of two ways to
Frances Ha. Some will probably find
it to be a frustrating and boring look at the inconsequential meanderings of a
privileged and aimless bohemian. Others will undoubtedly identify with the
character’s idiosyncratic dreams and post grad anxieties.
Most of it may come down to where the viewer falls along the
generational spectrum. After all, the film, like Lena Dunham’s HBO show Girls, has been labeled as
generationally defining, and, really that’s a hard point to argue.
Generation Y is a dreamer generation. Our parents, teachers
and mentors – many of whom, we must keep in mind, could’ve really been somebody
if they had gotten the opportunity – sold us on the concept that we could do
whatever we wanted, that if we went to college and followed the script, we
could achieve our dreams.
But then we get out into the world and came face to face
with the reality that this type of success is hard. That it takes work and
sacrifice. And even then, even then, only a few people really make it. Not
everybody who “goes for it” becomes the next great actor, or novelist, or, in
the case of Frances Ha, the next
great dancer.
Yes, this is a movie that touches on a generational problem
of privileged Americans, but, to sell it as only that would be a mistake.
There’s something universal and timeless about failing to achieve a dream and
then having to redefine expectations and goals. And I think what’s so
fascinating about this movie is that it somehow pokes fun at and empathizes
with one woman in the process of realizing things aren’t going to go the way
she thought they would.
Frances (co-writer Greta Gerwig) is a 27-year-old struggling
to achieve her dreams of becoming a world-class dancer. She’s still just an
apprentice at her New York dance studio, but she’s convinced herself that an
opportunity to take on a more prominent role is coming soon.
In the meantime, she spends much of her time eating,
drinking, play fighting, and often crashing in the same bed with her best pal
and roommate Sophie (Sting’s daughter, Mickey Sumner). It’s a dependent
relationship, one that is dictating Frances' romantic life, as evidenced by a
refusal to move in with a boyfriend because she just couldn’t do that to
Sophie. At separate instances in the narrative, Frances comments that they are
“like a lesbian couple who don’t have sex anymore” and “the same person with
different hair.”
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| Frances Ha is the rare movie that focuses on female friendship. |
Frances’ existence is thrown for a loop when Sophie
announces she is going to move out of the Brooklyn apartment they share. Unable
to afford the rent on her own, Frances enters a nomadic period, bouncing from
place to place as she continues to get worse and worse news about work and grow
further and further apart from Sophie, who seems to be consciously fighting
against the arrested development that has consumed Frances.
Their relationship devolves to the point that Frances hears
through a third party that Sophie is moving to Japan with recent fiancé Patch
(Patrick Heusinger), a finance douchebag who both girls previously made fun of
as “the kind of guy who buys a black leather couch and is like, ‘I love it.’” Guys
like Patch may be successful and grounded, but they aren’t “magical,” a word
that Frances repeatedly uses and a feeling she constantly searches for. The
movie slyly indicates that Patch is actually a good guy, but to Frances, he’s
the Other. Not only is he the man stealing away her best friend; he also
has his shit together.
The intense focus on a realistic female friendship is
welcome in an age of so many cinematic bromances. More often than not, female
friends exist in movies primarily as a sound board for the romantic
misadventures of our female lead, but Frances
Ha is a movie that would easily ace the Bechdel Test.
This is all good stuff, but the film wouldn’t work without
Gerwig’s exceptional lead performance. Frances is obnoxious and hopeless, the
kind of character you just want to slap, and yet, in Gerwig’s hands, she is
also charming, optimistic, and a woman to root for. I’m assuming the role isn’t
a tremendous stretch for the actress, but that hardly takes away from the fact
that this is a wonderfully immersive and fully-rounded performance. It’s easily
my favorite by a female since Jessica Chastain blew the doors off in Zero Dark Thirty.
Director/co-writer Noah Baumbach (Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg)
normally works with caustic and cynical characters, but he does well in this
more whimsical territory. He pays homage to French cinema and the works of
Woody Allen, sampling ideas, tones and stylistic flourishes, not to mention
full on scenes. A jogging sequence set
to David Bowie’s Modern Love nods to Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sand (full confession: I haven't seen the movie; only the scene... on a blog... about this very topic), and a bit in
which Frances tries to get a new roommate to play-fight with her is a direct
descendant of the lobster interactions from Annie
Hall.
There’s something impressive in the way that Baumbach and
Gerwig create a narrative that is authentic and seemingly improvisational and
yet still controlled enough to circle back and hit home so many of the film’s
themes. Refreshingly, the film avoids the temptation to fix Frances by pairing
her off with a love interest as so many other films have done. There is a
potential beau in Benji (Michael Zegen), a hipster artist who affectionately deems
Frances as “undateable,” but the film wisely leaves that thread dangling.
Instead, the climax offers us a resurgent Frances, one who
lives on her own, has taken an olive branch from her studio owner to work in
the office and has begun pursuing a new dream in choreography. It all feels
earned, especially the moment we see her realize that although her relationship
with Sophie is forever changed, it’s still somehow the relationship she was
longing for.
At one point in the film, Frances proclaims “I’m sorry. I’m
not a real person yet.” It’s played for a joke, but it’s also a defining line for
the character. The kicker at the end of the film plays off this comment in a
way that is both funny and thematically potent. I won’t spoil the joke here,
but I will say it explains the title while offering the suggestion that settling
into a somewhat grounded reality is not only a possible outcome, but a magical
one as well. A
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