Frances Ha
Director: Noah Baumbach
Writer: Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Michael Esper, Adam Driver, Michael Zegen, Charlotte d’Amboise, Grace Gummer

Plot:
Frances (Great Gerwig) spends most of her time with her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) and training to be a dancer. But then Sophie wants to move out of the apartment they share and Frances doesn’t get anywhere with her dancing. But even as her dreams start to crumble around her, Frances refuses to come much closer to reality.

I pretty much hated the last Baumbach film I saw, Greenberg. But since I did like Greta Gerwig in it and this film did look nice, I decided to go for it anyway, despite my trepidations. And I did like Frances Ha, even if I didn’t completely love it.

Frances Ha is pretty much the epitome of a hipster movie. Everybody is quirky in it. It’s shot in black and white. The characters don’t really go anywhere much – at least at first. It helps that the movie does show a bit of restraint and doesn’t run off into the sunset with its own quirkiness but it’s still a lot.

But while I’m usually not one for these kinds of films, this one has an advantage that many other films of its kind don’t have: Frances. Frances is a great character and she actually does get to develop and grow and even mature a bit.

Oh and Greta Gerwig is just completely wonderful. She’s funny and she’s constantly on the move and runs her mouth, but she manages to also give Frances a vulnerability under all her enthusiasm and her (initial) refusal to engage with reality at all. It was a fantastic performance.

It still probably won’t become my new favorite movie, but I did enjoy it. Which is more than I can say for Greenberg anyway.

Summarizing: extremely nice.