Frances Ha (2012)
Starring: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Adam DriverWritten By: Noah Baumbach & Greta GerwigDirected By: Noah BaumbachRelease Date: May 17, 2013Rating: B
Summary: A young dancer goes through life's trails of rekindling broken friendships, major career changes, and not only finding love, but finding outwhat she wants out of life through all of that.
My Thoughts: Frances Ha is a film that works not just because of it's intense realism in how it touches the kinds of issues present in the lives of "twenty-somethings" in such a simplistic, yet in-depth manner, (similar to that of Lena Dunham's Girls), but it also because it touches this realm of cinema that a lot of people loved, but have seem to forgotten about: The French New Wave. Frances Haworks well not because of anything spectacular or grandiose done within the film because it's not spectacular or grandiose in any way, it's, again, simplistic in its characters and in the format it uses to tell its story and and what the film accomplishes thatGirlsdoes as well is create characters that are simply reincarnations of the people watching it, not these "movie people", who are perfect, un-flawed and have their problems wrapped up for them at the end of the film. Spot on was the conversation about finding love that Frances has with a room full of married people and spot on is the constant jumping from place-to-place and job-to-job, only to do something stupid and risky that leads one into even more debt than they already are like randomly flying to Paris, maxing a credit card that you got in the mail days prior or turning down a job offer when you're unemployed simply because you deem yourself above that kind of work. And it's in these kinds of actions that Baumbach encaptures what it not only means to be a "twenty-something" in New York, but what it means to make oneself happy, no matter how hard or frustrating it may be.
Frances (Greta Gerwig), our titular character is a dancer and a failing one as she loses her apprenticeship for the dancing company she works for On top of losing that apprenticeship, her boyfriend has broken up with her because she refused to live with him in order to preserve her best friend's feelings. However, unbeknownst to her, her best friend, Sophia (Mickey Sumner) has found another apartment with one of their mutual friends, leaving Greta behind with no source of income to pay for the apartment solely by herself and it's there where her and Sophie's relationship begins to falter and we follow the rest of her up-and-downs. In Jean-Luc Godard's My Life to Live, we follow another twenty-something named Nana, who happens to also be a prostitute. And
Godard's film, like Frances Ha, is the study of a young woman. As if these films were documentaries, we follow around these two women from place to place through misadventure after misadventure via long continuous shots and title-cards to roughly introduce a new chapter in their lives. These women want to be something great, whether it lie in becoming a great dancer or actress, however, their stories aren't about them in them actually achieving these goals, it's more so about them living and coping in lifestyles that are far from ideal with Frances living in poverty and barely scrapping by with odd jobs like waitressing and becoming an RA for her college and Nana in her prostituting herself. And our job isn't to judge anyone's choices, or really have any kind of though about them or what they do, our job is just to simply sit back and watch their lives unfold before our eyes with the camera sitting at eye-level at pretty much every moment of each film in simply recording life go on, as if it's a viewer as well. There's nothing extra going on in these films, except two women living their lives during very different times and we're looking at them the way we would if they were real people. Both these women feel real, and their stories seem authentic and regardless if we've been put in their situations personally, they still feel personal. And that's what the French New Wave was all about: creating personal cinema. These women aren't glamorous, their situations aren't ideal, but they live anyways. We simply watch and accept what we see because it could happen to us and it possibly is happening to many others around us. Neither film is stylistic or visually pleasing and the French New Wave music in Frances Ha never ceases to bring us back to the age of films like Godard's and Truffaut and other's set in a time long before Frances, but here we are in the present day. And similar to that of other films created within this period of New Wave cinema, both films shock, but least in the way you expect. The shock in My Life to Live is Nana's death. However, the shocker in Frances Ha is that it's not about romance. It's easy to think that it is and the film even sets it up as if it is supposed to be one, but we're duped time and time again and she does not find "the one." She goes on a date Lev (Adam Driver) and nothing results from that, even though she moves in with him and Benji (Micheal Zegen) who the film also teases as a love interest for Frances even though he describes her as "undatable." And while we want her to find love, it's not what Frances is directly looking for and we accept it. There are no confessions of love or giant, romantic gestures. Francis just moves from place to place, trying to just live her life even through her career instability and her fleeting friendship with Sophie. And the most enjoyable part about this film just comes from just sitting back and watching these women live. And while the ending is incomplete, as most New Wave films are, and we're left with little to no answers about what came of Francis after everything, there's still a feeling of satisfaction in the fact that you could even witness this part of her life.
