Frances Ha under­stands the pow­er of female friendship

This year marks a decade since Noah Baum­bach​’s Frances Ha danced her way into UK cin­e­mas. Co-writ­ten by and star­ring Gre­ta Ger­wig, the film fol­lows aspir­ing dancer Frances Hal­la­day as she nav­i­gates 20-some­thing life in New York; bounc­ing from flat­share to flat­share, from one job to anoth­er and learn­ing that just as you are grow­ing and chang­ing, so is every­one around you.

Like Frances, I’ve recent­ly seen my female friends get into seri­ous rela­tion­ships, and start­ed to wor­ry about being left behind. It is inevitable that friends must grow apart in order to make space in our lives for roman­tic part­ners, fam­i­lies, careers and more. But it still hurts, espe­cial­ly for us sin­gle folk whose best friends are often the clos­est things we’ve got to a part­ner. When music, film, TV, the­atre and lit­er­a­ture have con­di­tioned us to view roman­tic part­ners as the loves of our lives, what I love about Frances Ha is that it shows us how friends can be the loves of our lives too.

Over the past few years, the female friend­ship film has become syn­ony­mous with raunchy stu­dio come­dies like Brides­maids, Bad Moms, Girls Trip and Books­mart. Bonds are solid­i­fied through shared expe­ri­ences like explo­sive food poi­son­ing at a bridal dress fit­ting or acci­den­tal­ly uri­nat­ing over a New Orleans zipline. These films cap­ture female friend­ship at its most chaot­ic where­as Frances Ha depicts female friend­ship at its most mun­dane and inti­mate. The film opens with a mon­tage of Frances and her best friend Sophie run­ning through New York City, cook­ing din­ner in their apart­ment, read­ing to each oth­er, play­ing board games, doing laun­dry and falling asleep in the same bed like an old mar­ried couple.

Not only does this mon­tage cap­ture a sense of ten­der­ness and domes­tic bliss which is typ­i­cal­ly reserved for roman­tic rela­tion­ships, but it also estab­lish­es Frances and Sophie as the film’s cen­tral pair­ing. Even though the film opens with Frances break­ing up with her boyfriend Dan because she would rather con­tin­ue liv­ing with Sophie than move in with him, it is not this break-up that marks the film’s incit­ing inci­dent. In fact, Dan is rarely men­tioned again. It is Frances’ break-up with Sophie, who first choos­es to move out of their apart­ment and then moves away with her boyfriend Patch, which marks the film’s incit­ing inci­dent. In this sto­ry, Sophie is Frances’ love interest.

Friend­ships don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly end when one gets into a seri­ous roman­tic rela­tion­ship, but they do have to evolve. Time and atten­tion become divid­ed, some­times more towards the roman­tic part­ner which can make friend­ships feel less inti­mate. Frances is upset when Patch and Sophie can only stay for a ​“quick drink” after com­ing to watch her dance show.

Qual­i­ty time is impor­tant to her as she fears becom­ing a ​“3‑hour brunch friend”. After an argu­ment about this, the pair are only dri­ven fur­ther apart and Frances lat­er learns that Sophie has moved to Tokyo with Patch. It comes as a shock to us too, giv­en Sophie’s indif­fer­ence towards her boyfriend ear­li­er in the film; ​“Patch is a nice guy…for today” she says, of their relationship.

Brides­maids is anoth­er, albeit very dif­fer­ent, film which explores a female friend­ship in which both char­ac­ters are in dif­fer­ent stages of life. Lil­lian is recent­ly engaged, hap­py in her job, and look­ing to set­tle down. On the oth­er hand, Annie is sin­gle, work­ing a job she hates after her busi­ness went bust and lives with an eccen­tric sib­ling duo.

Whilst Lil­lian has built a close-knit cir­cle of female friends, from what we see, Lil­lian is Annie’s best and only friend. The film’s cen­tral ten­sion derives from Annie’s attempts to remain Lillian’s best friend, as she feels her­self being edged out by the annoy­ing­ly per­fect new­com­er Helen. Com­par­ing Brides­maids with Frances Ha, there are cer­tain­ly par­al­lels between Frances and Annie. But they also dif­fer dras­ti­cal­ly, espe­cial­ly when it comes to their rela­tion­ships with men.

Brides­maids intro­duces a male love inter­est for Annie, who helps re-affirm her self-worth and rekin­dle her love of bak­ing. Where­as Frances doesn’t real­ly have a love inter­est. Men play sec­ondary roles in her life and roman­tic rela­tion­ships are nev­er a key focal point for her. Even though she fre­quent­ly jokes that she is ​“undate­able”, Frances doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want a boyfriend. She wants com­pan­ion­ship, in what­ev­er form she can find. It’s what she had with Sophie and it’s what she spends the rest of the film chas­ing as she attempts to forge new friend­ships and vis­it new places.

Lat­er in the film, Frances returns to her alma mater to work as a wait­ress and res­i­dent assis­tant for the sum­mer. Whilst work­ing at a char­i­ty auc­tion, she spots Patch and a drunk­en Sophie who has returned to New York for a fam­i­ly funer­al. Sophie loud­ly announces their engage­ment to anoth­er auc­tion guest, which shocks Frances. After argu­ing with Patch, Sophie sleeps in Frances’ dorm room. She apol­o­gis­es for throw­ing up in the trash can but does not apol­o­gise for how she has treat­ed Frances.

It is Frances who attempts an apol­o­gy, say­ing ​“I’m sor­ry, it’s just…if some­thing fun­ny hap­pens at the deli, you’ll only tell one per­son and that’ll be Patch and I’ll nev­er hear about it”. This line beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tures the role which mun­dan­i­ty plays in friend­ship. Grow­ing up, we still expect our friends to be there for our major mile­stones but we have to accept that they may no longer be there every day. Frances recog­nis­es that she has been pos­ses­sive over Sophie but must accept that as they change as peo­ple, their friend­ship must change too.

Drunk and strug­gling to make small talk at a din­ner par­ty, ear­li­er in the film, Frances deliv­ers an impromp­tu mono­logue to her fel­low guests. She tells them ​“I want this one moment. It’s what I want in a rela­tion­ship, which may explain why I’m still sin­gle now…it’s that thing where you love some­one and they know it and they love you and you know it but it’s a par­ty and you’re both talk­ing to oth­er peo­ple and you’re laugh­ing and shin­ing and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes but not because you’re pos­ses­sive or it’s pre­cise­ly sex­u­al but because that is your per­son in life. And it’s fun­ny and sad but only because this life will end and it’s the secret world that exists right there, in pub­lic, unno­ticed, that no one else knows about…”

The ​‘secret world’ she describes calls back to the film’s open­ing mon­tage, where we saw a glimpse into the world she shared with Sophie. As the film draws to a close, Frances starts work­ing as a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er for young chil­dren and directs a show­case. Ben­ji, Sophie and Patch attend to show their sup­port. Although the film ends with Frances seem­ing­ly start­ing a rela­tion­ship with Ben­ji, we see her glance across the room and lock eyes with Sophie. At that moment, we see their secret world once more and Frances’ real­i­sa­tion that what she is look­ing for in a rela­tion­ship, she already has with her best friend.

In my life, I have placed a lot of empha­sis on roman­tic love and some­how naive­ly believed that it would solve all my prob­lems. But the most endur­ing love has been that of my female friends. Frances Ha recog­nis­es that female friend­ships are just as wor­thy of their own love sto­ries. And that although these friend­ships evolve and often become part of a big­ger pic­ture, that secret world will always exist.