Essentials: Frances Ha

Year: 2012
Genre: Comedy
Directed: Noah Baumbach
Stars: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Esper, Adam Driver, Michael Zegen, Charlotte d'Amboise, Grace Gummer, Justine Lupe
Production: RT Pictures

It was my birthday recently. Officially I'm in my late-20's; the point in one's life where career goals take precedence over impromptu road trips with friends. Where settling into a routine is a sign of maturity and love is no longer about romance and magic but about compatibility and "the future". Needless to say, I'm not where I should be (are any of us?). Life can sometimes feel like playing a game after it's already started and realizing most of the game-pieces have gone missing. Sometimes we just have to make due.

Wait, so how many hit points do I get with my Frisbee?

Frances Ha is a kindhearted and bittersweet pat on the shoulder to those feeling the existential dread of growing up. When we first meet Frances (Gerwig) our free-spirited protagonist, she's hitting the New York City Subway with her best friend and roommate Sophie (Sumner). Sophie confirms Frances's fear that she'll be moving out and living with her fiancee Dan (Esper). That revelation, coupled with the dwindling hopes of making a coveted spot in her dance troop sends Frances into a tailspin. The film then gently drifts with Frances as she struggles to make the adjustments in her life she needs, while still shooting for the dreams that brought her this far.

Frances Ha is not a cautionary tale about the folly of dreams, nor is it an obnoxiously twee endorsement of their tenacity. Instead the camera follows our beleaguered hero with kind eyes, hoping to gain insight through granular subjectivity. By all respects Frances is a hot mess, but she exhibits an intelligence and effervescence that overwhelms the audience's inclination to call her and the people around her self-absorbed. We don't know what will become of Frances and her dreams but we as the audience are invited into every detail of her sun-kissed world. Even when she takes a fruitless trip to Paris; a dalliance few millennials can afford, we still sympathize with her and want her to succeed.

Both director Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig co-wrote the screenplay resulting in a film so nuanced and complex that it can't help but feel personal. The crisp black and white cinematography and elliptic montages sprinkled throughout evoke memories of the French New Wave yet the straightforward narrative aims for something more oblique than simply being a disruptive force. While Jules and Jim (1962) is brassy, Frances Ha is reticent; while Vivre Sa Vie (1962) is socio-political, Frances Ha is singular. Calling back to the visual aesthetics and style of the 60's, Baumbach and Gerwig successfully build a serene naturalistic world within the bustling monoliths of New York City. In Frances's own words "It's like magic."

Left: Jules et Jim (1962) Right: Frances Ha (2012)

At twenty-seven years old, Frances craves the emotional, intellectual and spiritual maturity that everyone around her seems to have. She asks others, almost naively, who she is and who she might become. She never realizes that the same people she asks don't have answers for themselves yet. Friends Benji (Zegen) and Lev (Driver) act like wayward Bohemians despite their breeding. Yet despite their pretensions they exhibit the same fears and the same aspirations as Frances and Sophie do. And much like Frances and Sophie, they eventually adapt and change. Dan and Sophie's supposedly solid relationship serves as a coda to Frances character development. The point in which Frances truly commits to change. I won't ruin the resolution to the story but I will say that when Frances muses "I like things that look like mistakes," you're still taken by her sunny disposition.

Frances Ha may not impact you as much as it did me. The film entered my life around the same time the film itself enters Frances's. I feel her pain, I have experienced her disappointments and thanks to the film's stark beauty, I have shared in her small triumphs and sweetly clumsy bemusement. Frances Ha forced me to examine who I was and where I'm going; a feat few films have made me do. The film ends with our plucky hero writing her name on a label. A small detail that makes a bold, if gawky pronouncement: "I am here." It's an inspiring final tableau; one that makes me feel better about not having my life together in my late-twenties.

Final Grade: A