Francis Ha (2012): Growing Up Is Hard To Do

Frances Ha is one of those little, kind-of arty independent movies that get under your skin for awhile. It’s about a season in a young woman’s life when she’s stuck between lives – her college years are well behind her, but she hasn’t  yet found her footing, her focus, the adult self that she is to become.

Frances (Greta Gerwig) is 27 when we first meet her, hanging out in New York   

City, with her roommate and best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), imagining that the two of them are really the same person, assuming that they can drift along more or less effortlessly, indefinitely, together - getting drunk, having adventures, dreaming dreams of an artful life, hooking up with fun guys, avoiding responsibility, having fun. She’s a free spirit of sorts, or feels that she is. But her life and her youthful fantasies about what that even means are about to change. Frances’ boyfriend breaks up with her when she dodges commitment, Sophie moves in with her boyfriend, so Frances must scramble to find another place to live, her fantasy career as a modern dancer seems like it’s going to be just that - a fantasy, and she is running out of money. In other words, reality suddenly and sharply insinuates itself.

Frances Ha is about how our eponymous protagonist copes with this moment.  That this is engaging and interesting has a lot to do with the naturalistic style and tone of the picture, thanks to co-writers Gerwig and director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale [2005], Greenberg [2010]). The movie is dialogue driven but the conversations are casual, seemingly unrehearsed, and unaffected. Some of this is uncomfortable stuff, because Frances and the situations she finds herself in are often awkward. At the same time, much of this is quite funny.

Baumbach is a fan of French New Wave films of the sixties, and in some ways the picture feels like an homage to that style, black and white cinematography and all. The seemingly effortless spontaneity of the acting and dialogue reminded me of Godard’s Breathless (1960), although the subject matter is wholly different here, and in reality, everything in Frances Ha was rehearsed and fine tuned.

Most of all, however, the film works because of Gerwig. She’s just very watchable – charming, alternately attractive and ordinary looking, intelligent, but not always smart, vulnerable, earnest and very, very human. Emotions play across her face constantly, if fleetingly: enthusiasm, doubt, confusion, hope, embarrassment, loneliness, and spirit.  She’s in virtually every frame, and that’s a very good thing.

Gerwig is helped by a fine supporting cast of young actors, none of whom seem to be acting at all. Especially noteworthy are Sumner and Michael Segner as Benji, a roommate and admirer.

Frances Ha is not a romantic comedy, nor is it a tearjerker, an action-adventure, or a heartwarming Hollywood drama. It is a fresh, honest look at an engaging, contemporary young woman’s struggle to understand herself , her world, and as another reviewer put it, the obligation to grow up.  As I said at the outset, it got under my skin, and I expect it may get under yours as well.

Frances Ha is available streaming and on DVD from Netflix, and on Amazon Instant Video.

P.S.  Director Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, with Laura Linney, Jeff Daniels, and a young Jesse Eisenberg, is, in my not so humble opinion, the best American movie about the reality of divorce to date.  If you haven’t seen it, you should.