‘I’m not messy, just busy,’ Frances Ha’s eponymous ingénue (Greta Gerwig, To Rome with Love) attempts to convince anyone who will listen – herself included. The scrunched up piles of clothing strewn around her untidy room indicate otherwise, shuffled between apartments as she lives a scattered existence anywhere she can afford. The ample time in her days, more often filled with anything other than what she has planned, tells the same story.
At 27 years old, and still ambling her way toward the dream dancing career that seems less and less likely to eventuate, Frances is both idle and disorderly. She yearns for the achievements that will prove the opposite, but remains caught in a cycle of mid-20 malaise that sees failures, rather than successes, strung out for all to see. She confidently prophesizes about a different future, but is hesitant to act, to get organised, to give her words not only intention, but purpose.
Together, writer/director Noah Baumbach (Greenberg) and star/co-scribe Gerwig capture Frances’ quandary, one emblematic of her life stage. As the ebullient but ever self-sabotaging protagonist flits from one personal and professional pit-stop to another – watching as her best friend (Mickey Sumner, TV’s The Borgias) transitions to coupledom, her platonic pals (Girls’ Adam Driver and Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Zegen) brand her ‘undateable’, and her dance mentor (Charlotte d’Amboise, One Life to Live) encourages caution – she dwells in a state of arrested development, waiting for adulthood to begin instead of making it happen.
The concept may be familiar as the incursion of the quarter-life crisis becomes increasing common film and television fodder; however never has the struggle – not just for direction, but for a true sense of identity – felt so heartbreaking yet optimistic all at once. Sam Levy’s magnificent monochrome cinematography casts the tragically comic spiral of circumstances in the warm glow of richly detailed compositions, but it is the shrewd content that shines through in every meticulously-constructed frame, courtesy of Baumbach’s naturalistic helming and Gerwig’s eternal charm.
For the former, his empathy radiates – first, with buoyancy that soars in sublime (and, in one staggering segment that affectionately essays the New York City streets, Bowie-scored) dance sequences; then, with acceptance that seeps through in stolen moments of intimacy. For the latter, the awkward and the endearing intertwine in her whirlwind of calm-faced chaos, her performance disarming as it delights in the details of her fully fleshed-out character. Their combined efforts offer a triumph of the astute and the economical, and the resonant and the realistic, with every element of the script palpable in its intensity and authenticity.
Indeed, amidst the nervous comedy and nuanced observation, the film touches hearts and minds not because it replicates the true tales that come with that age, but because it embodies and embraces it – warts, wins, worries, woes and all. In the very best way, Frances Ha is as messy and busy as its titular character longs to be, filled with the verity and vividness of life, for better and for worse.
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
Frances Ha
Director: Noah Baumbach
USA, 2013, 86 mins
Release date: 15 August
Distributor: Transmission
Rated MA
Melbourne International Film Festival
25 July – 12 August
Possible Worlds Festival of American and Canadian Cinema
http://www.possibleworlds.net.au/
8 – 18 August
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