Dir: Noah Baumbach
With: Greta Gerwig, Grace Gummer
Runtime: 86 minutes
FRANCES Ha, the joyful tale of a young New Yorker flat-sharing and job-hunting her way across town, is shot in moody black and white as a nod to the French New Wave and Woody Allen's Manhattan, but it is from first to last Greta Gerwig's picture.
Gerwig, so good in Greenberg as a depressed and flailing young woman falling in love with the wrong man, shines here as the scatty and indefatigable Frances of the title.
Though well into her 20s, Frances, a dancer, just cannot seem to settle down for long with anyone or at any thing. She had been best friends with someone, but that someone left her for the grown-up world of boyfriends and building a home, leaving Frances to pirouette through city life alone.
Gerwig co-wrote the picture with its director, Noah Baumbach, who also helmed Greenberg and The Squid and the Whale (he is also Gerwig's partner). In trademark Baumbach style, not a lot happens in Frances Ha.
The drama, like the dialogue, is free wheeling and slight. All of which should make for a flimsy, lightweight, even irritating and self-indulgent piece, but the Baumbach technique is deceptive. Placing layer upon layer, he builds scenes and a character that ring utterly true. The dialogue, like Frances, might seem all over the place but it is spot on in meaning and style.
Frances is not, of course, the first ditzy, la-di-da New Yorker on film. Diane Keaton made that particular mould years ago with Annie Hall. But Gerwig's character fits more easily into our post-crash, no jobs for life, insecure times.
Far from screaming at a lobster escaping behind a fridge, Frances can only dream of buying lobster. Or owning her own fridge for that matter. The lady is broke, but in the words of the Sinatra song, it's oke.
As such, her story will prompt many a grimace of recognition from, and provide some comfort to, twentysomethings engaged in similar struggles to find their way. Everyone else can simply sit back and enjoy Gerwig having the time of her screen life as Frances.
Baumbach barely allows a scene to go by without her in it. We watch her every move as she dates, rehearses, rides the subway, watches television, breaks up with a boyfriend, play fights with a pal, goes home to California to spend Christmas with her family, attends an excruciating dinner party, and uses a cash machine.
No matter how mundane the act, Gerwig is a pleasure to watch, whirling through the film and taking the audience with her. Who knows where Frances will ultimately end up, but we know from the start that it will be a fun ride watching her travel.
Adding to the sense of joie de vivre – not a commodity one usually associates with New Yorkers – is a soundtrack which ranges in a delightfully eccentric and upbeat fashion from Hot Chocolate to David Bowie's Modern Love. New York, perhaps the most filmed city in the world, is made to look even more hip and happening by being filmed in crisp yet luscious black and white. This is a town of parks and gardens, possibilities and setbacks.
The music and the setting aside, the coolest thing in the film remains Gerwig, who combines the looks of a young Deneuve with Annie Hall charm.
Like the Manhattan-New Wave combination, it is another French-American alliance that works a treat. A feel-good, feels right, experience.
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