Frances Ha

Frances Ha may be the most engaging and refreshing film I have watched this year.  Any film from writer/director Noah Baumbach is instantly on my must-see list, but Frances Ha rivals (and possibly surpasses) his best works.

It's as if Baumbach and star/co-writer Great Gerwig foresaw the Swedish theaters that are rating films according to the Bechdel Test.  What is the Bechdel Test?  It's a checklist lifted from a feminist comic strip in the 1980s by Allison Bechdel.  In order for a film to pass the test, it must (1) have at least two named female characters (2) who talk to each other (3) about something other than a man.  Very few movies actually pass this test.  Frances Ha aces the hell out of these requirements and yet would not necessarily be considered a feminist movie. 

 

What Frances Ha is is a movie that stylistically borrows heavily from the best of American independent cinema and the French New Wave.  The influence of American indie films comes mostly from Noah Baumbach being, for the most part, an independent filmmaker.  And Frances Ha is definitely in his wheelhouse.  It feels, in a way, like a thematic sequel to his excellent Kicking and Screaming (not to be confused with Will Ferrell's terrible soccer movie).  Baumbach is a master at crafting intelligent characters who are lost and/or unsure of what to do.  In The Squid and the Whale, it's a brilliant young teen lost amidst his parents' divorce.  In Kicking and Screaming, it's a group of new college graduates who are unsure of what they're supposed to do with their lives. 

 

Frances Ha takes a look at a young woman who, as 30 draws nearer, still remains lost post-college.  The thing that makes Frances Ha so intriguing (and keeps it from being a retread of Kicking and Screaming) is that Frances' (Gerwig) friends are leading lives as working adults at various levels of success.  The dynamics of abandonment, envy, and unconscious superiority that come from people who all went through the same education system but came out so differently elevate this movie to something incredible.

 

Frances Ha also portrays something little seen in cinema: a strong female friendship.  The relationship between Frances and her best friend Sophie is almost bizarrely strong.  It's that awkward kind of friendship wherein everyone else feels like a third wheel (including boyfriends).  This intense camaraderie is predominately reserved for "bro-mances."  It's a nice change to see women get along in a movie (and they never fight over the same guy).  It makes the friction that enters their friendship due to changing life directions all the more heartbreaking.  But that friendship is the subject of my favorite line in the movie: "The coffee people are right.  We're like a lesbian couple who doesn't have sex anymore."

 

The script is phenomenal.  Every line is pregnant with meaning and insanely clever.  Plus, it's super funny.  So far, I've been talking about this movie in terms of "abandonment," "envy," "heartbreak," etc.  But Frances Ha is most definitely a comedy.  There's a film by Whit Stillman (like Baumbach, a director whose every film I anticipate) also starring Greta Gerwig called Damsels in Distress.  Frances Ha feels very much like a revisiting of Gerwig's character.  The snappy, clever dialogue is even similar in both films.  Needless to say, Frances Ha may not be a gut buster, but the humor is more satisfying than most comedies.

 

Finally, I mentioned the influence of the French New Wave.  It's all over this movie.  The black and white photography is taken straight from Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows (the film even features music from that movie) or Jean-Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders (Frances' two male roommates are very reminiscent of the Godard's characters).  Although Frances Ha lacks the subversive or experimental edge of the New Wave directors, it's still great to see a film so reminiscent of those great films.

 

I'll be watching Frances Ha many more times.  It's a film that will probably rise in my esteem over the years.  If you're interested in seeing one of the best films of the year, this is a great way to spend 85 minutes.

 

9 out of 10