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How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 6 March 2013
This article is a review of FRANCES HA.
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“This has not been great for awhile,” Daniel to Frances
Black and white photography. A play fight in a New York park between Frances (Greta Gerwig) and best bud Sophie. They are also flatmates, seeming to do everything together. Both have other halves, but they are minor players, especially when Frances’s ends it for her reticence towards moving in together. The twosome profess love for one another, and greet each other with “Ahoy sexy!” Then Sophie lets us her down, and chooses to rent with someone else. And that sets the tone for the film. It’s about everyone letting down Frances, but her not getting depressed about it. Even though she can be her own worst enemy - can’t we all? – we watch at her attempts to strive forward in the quicksand of modern life as a twenty-something.
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Director Noah Baumbach is wallowing in the bath he is so content in, and doesn’t seem willing to leave, as there is an apparent unending seam to mine. That tub is peopled full of the annoying, self-obsessed, delusional, and very human. From THE SQUID AND THE WHALE to MARGOT AT THE WEDDING to GREENBERG, we have to watch through our fingers at the protagonists’ antics. Emotional growing and crises are filtered this time through the sensibility of Gerwig, who is also co-writer. Her lack of vanity and willingness to embrace humiliation on multiple levels will naturally draw comparisons to Lena Dunham’s TINY FURNITURE and television show GIRLS. The two leads even share actor Adam Driver. There’s obviously plenty of room within the mumblecore subgenre to stretch out in, and explore young people finding their paths. The boys (Joe Swanberg-Andrew Bujalski-the Duplass brothers) and other ladies (Lynn Shelton-Katie Aselton) don’t tend to overlap in terms of ideas; though there’s a pleasant interconnection of casting.
In beautifully lit environments, Frances struggles career-wise (she’s a dance understudy), financially to support herself, romantically, and in camaraderie. One flatmate, Benji, calls her “undateable”, which morphs into house slang for saying something less than slick. At one point Frances is a dancer living with a screenwriter and a sculptor. Doesn’t anyone have a normal job? Or is it that status is not now about possessions, but the coolest career?
The interactions offer little quarter to mawkishness, in its stead is people acting awkwardly, mainly Frances though. Truth bombs are dropped inadvertently mostly on herself, but also sometimes choicely on others – a dinner party monologue, in which she debunks the claptrap dished by some people who claim to not be into themselves after they have children, is brilliant.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to get your attention,” Lev (Adam Driver)
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