For a such a deliberately low-key project, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha has attracted more than its fair share of tabloid attention, chiefly due to the fact that the director and his much younger leading lady Greta Gerwig are now a couple. The pair met on the set of Baumbach’s last picture, the mid-life crisis mopeathon Greenberg, where Gerwig provided a welcome contrast to Ben Stiller’s defiantly unlikeable title character. They subsequently began writing together and Frances Ha, shot guerrilla-style on a modest budget, is the first fruit of their collaboration (they also co-wrote the director’s next, currently untitled film). For Gerwig it offers a well-deserved shot at a starring role, and for Baumbach it’s a chance to bounce back after the mixed critical and commercial reaction to his last two directorial efforts.
Shot in beautiful, burnished monochrome by cinematographer Sam Levy, Frances Ha immediately recalls Woody Allen’s Manhattan in its look and Lena Dunham’s Girls (that show’s Adam Driver also turns up in a supporting role) in its focus on the arty, aimless inhabitants of young New York. It’s a sunnier, more optimistic creation than either of its illustrious precursors however. Yes, it’s yet another tale of millennial arrested development but Gerwig’s Frances is an original, a gawky wide-eyed goofball with a talent for embarrassing herself, an uncool girl in a very cool world. Gerwig is a gifted physical comedian and there are several inspired moments of slapstick here, including a hilarious scene where Frances engages her reluctant roommate in some slightly too vigorous “play-fighting”. The story may be a slight one – Frances tries to make it as a dancer, has rent troubles, falls out with her best friend – but the film’s chief pleasures lie not in any plot machinations but in its delineation of the minor moments of triumph and disaster that make up your mid-twenties. In interviews Gerwig has talked about attempting to capture a feeling of “melancholy joy” and in its best scenes – a disastrous dinner party, the least romantic trip to Paris ever – the film toes that line perfectly.
With its barely there plot and slender 86 minute running time Frances Ha does feel somewhat insubstantial, but in a summer where the blockbusters have been even more leaden than usual its throwaway charms make for a refreshing change. After a series of acclaimed supporting turns and one failed attempt to go mainstream in Russell Brand’s disastrous Arthur remake, Greta Gerwig has found the perfect vehicle (even if she did have to write it herself) for her endearingly old-fashioned screen presence. Her creative input has clearly reinvigorated Baumbach too, who delivers his most purely enjoyable film yet and easily his best work since 2005’s The Squid and the Whale.
Fuzzy Lamentations 