The eponymous protagonist of Frances Ha is never happier than in the
film’s opening montage, as we watch her and her best friend simply go about
their quirky existences in a black-and-white New York City. Everything about
them appears carefree, and they seem like two people who are completely content
with just existing in the status quo. Then, in the first scene after the title
card, the status quo is challenged. From there things begin to slowly drift
away from Frances, and it seems like everyone is looking to grow up and take
charge of their lives and careers except her. This description makes the movie
sound much more joyless than it is, as Frances
Ha is a delight of an experience that revolves around the considerable
gravitational pull of its star Greta Gerwig. She helped write the film with
director Noah Baumbach, and as a result this is the perfect role at the perfect
time.
This initial challenge to
said status quo comes when her boyfriend asks her to move in with him. When she
declines, they break up. Not long after, Frances’ best friend Sophie (Mickey
Sumner) moves out of the apartment they share together, leaving our heroine all
alone in her world of whimsy. When she eventually has to find a new place
herself, she drifts from location to location looking for absolutely anything
to which she can latch on. She just wants to twirl around the city with her friend and
start a dancing career and avoid grown-up work at every opportunity. Really,
though, her main problem is finding a friendship that comes close to what she
had with Sophie. She comes close when she moves in with Lev (Adam Driver) and
Benji (Michael Zegen), but she can never quite find precisely what she is looking for.
There’s not a whole lot about
Frances Ha that’s wildly original,
and in the plot/structure department there’s just about nothing to speak of. Frances
does something, then she does something else, and then another thing, and this
formula repeats itself until the credits roll. That’s a slight problem, and
that means that this movie is doomed to live and die by its charms. Luckily,
these charms are plentiful, and just about all of them involve Gerwig in some
way. She gives the type of performance that lets the audience know who she is
from the first time we see her. She’s a strange and sometimes frustrating
character, but she’s frustrating in a magnetic, weirdly likable way. Contrast
this to Baumbach’s own Greenberg,
which presented us with a similarly problematic protagonist but never really gave us a
reason to like him. The people are oddly similar, but Gerwig is likely the
chief reason that Frances Ha succeeds
where Baumbach’s previous film failed.
It’s also a wonderfully
cheery film, despite the fact that it focuses quite a bit on the economic
struggles of its lead. Baumbach never attempts to turn Frances Ha into some deep statement on anything, and instead just
settles on making it a specific comedy about a specific character living in a
specific New York City environment. On that level, it’s absolutely terrific. It
is funny, fully realized and engagingly performed. Gerwig has been an actress on the verge of stardom for a little bit now, and while this movie may reach
too narrow an audience to really have her break through, it certainly has the
potential to give her the boost she so deeply deserves. It is one of the best
performances of the year so far, and it comes in a film that may not be the
most ambitious piece of entertainment, but it’s hard to find an area in which
it comes up short of its goals.
Grade: A-
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