Film: Frances Ha

Director: Noah Baumbach
Genre: Comedy
Source: USA (2013)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: A

Even when the transition to adulthood seems smooth, it's almost never easy. And if that transition is bumpy--if it turns out you're not the special little snowflake your teachers said that you were, that you don't have what it takes to be the artist, the adventurer, the genius that you thought you were--then it can be downright painful--or at the very least extremely clumsy.

That's the beauty behind Frances Ha. I think most people--even if we're not the slightly spoiled hipster flakes that Frances is--will be able to identify pieces of themselves in her "awkward man-walk" towards self-acceptance and maturity. As she dances her way through a series of apartments, roommates, friends, and lovers--watching as everyone around her seems to get themselves together more quickly and easily than she does--she starts to identify what she's capable of, as well as what she's not. It's not a story about settling, but it is a story about realigning your vision of yourself and your priorities for your life. 

Greta Gerwig, here a cowriter as well as the delightfully un-self-conscious titular Frances, gives a natural performance that is both sweet and shaky in all the right ways. When Frances, for example, decides to take a friend's advice and go to Paris (on a seemingly mindless whim) the trip is both more and less than she expected, and she can't quite bring herself to admit to anyone else who much she might have botched the adventure. But she also owns it, and whatever else the trip may have been, it is her trip--much like she increasingly learns to take account for her other choices as well.

Baumbach is here a lot more sympathetic to Frances than he has seemed to characters from other films, and the movie has an element of open-heartedness to it that I haven't seen from him in his other, to me more cynical, films. Perhaps that is Gerwig's influence, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is the vein of Woody Allen he is mining here (though Woody is not always someone I think of as warmhearted either). Allen's influence is clear--a black and white New York story centered on a quirky but intelligent lead. 

Ultimately, the film has me excited for Baumbach again. I hope the film marks a turn to slightly more sincere and less jaded work in the future. It works for him.