Frances Ha

“I like things that look like mis­takes,” says Frances (Gre­ta Ger­wig) near the end of the film named (part­ly) after her. Direc­tor/­co-writer Noah Baum­bach shares Frances’ predilec­tion for foibles. Indeed, his solo writ­ing projects (The Squid And The Whale, Mar­got At The Wed­ding) appear to love the sin more than the sin­ner, show­ing human mon­sters unable to over­come their own poi­so­nous flaws in some of the most cru­el­ly unfor­giv­ing — and sta­t­ic — char­ac­ter por­traits in noughties cinema.

Yet when he shares the writ­ing cred­it with oth­ers — with Wes Ander­son (The Life Aquat­ic With Steve Zis­sou, Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox), with Jen­nifer Jason Leigh (Green­berg, also star­ring Ger­wig) and here with Ger­wig her­self — Baumbach’s mis­an­thropy becomes soft­ened and his char­ac­ters, warts and all, are allowed room for growth and change.

Frances cer­tain­ly has her flaws. An arrest­ed 27-year-old woman-girl liv­ing (bare­ly) in New York, she is will­ing­ly trapped in a co-depen­dent rela­tion­ship with her col­lege BFF Sophie (Mick­ey Sum­n­er) — as one char­ac­ter puts it, ​“like a les­bian cou­ple that doesn’t have sex any­more.” Frances seems con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inca­pable of mov­ing in with her boyfriend, mov­ing on with her life, or even mov­ing out the front door.

Not that she fails to move alto­geth­er — for the film is reg­u­lar­ly punc­tu­at­ed by inter­ti­tles that cat­a­logue her every change in address, chart­ing a down­ward­ly mobile regres­sion which will lead her to spend Christ­mas back at her child­hood home in Sacra­men­to and even to move back to her old col­lege dorm. A week­end break in Paris, tak­en in a whim­si­cal bid to be like her bet­ter-trav­elled, more grown-up con­tem­po­raries, also only sets Frances back fur­ther, end­ing in fail­ure, impov­er­ish­ment and loneliness.

Frances’ sta­sis is in direct con­trast not just with the friends and acquain­tances who grad­u­al­ly leave her behind for an adult­hood of mar­riage, chil­dren and gain­ful employ­ment, but also with the film’s breezy, frag­men­tary mon­tages that depict life fly­ing by. Yet far from expos­ing her to low ridicule, Frances Ha presents its pro­tag­o­nist as a joy­ful­ly goofy, round­ed char­ac­ter who blooms all the more bright­ly for being such a late devel­op­er, and ulti­mate­ly, much like the film itself, puts all her mis­takes in the ser­vice of art. Eas­i­ly pass­ing the Bechdel test (Google it) in her hilar­i­ous ban­ter with Sophie, Frances may go through pover­ty and humil­i­a­tion in tak­ing the time to dis­cov­er what she real­ly wants, but she gets the last laugh.

The mono­chrome fin­ish evokes the black-and-white styl­i­sa­tion of clas­sic Woody Allen, while the more recent work of Lena Dun­ham (sub­tly name-checked in one scene) is sug­gest­ed by the dis­arm­ing (yet dis­in­ter­est­ed) explic­it­ness on sex­u­al mat­ters, the focus on twen­tysome­thing women adrift and the pres­ence of Girls’ Adam Dri­ver. Which is to say that Frances Ha both acknowl­edges and earns its place in the tra­di­tion of the New York bour­geois com­e­dy, encod­ing the angst of social mores in wit­ty dia­logue. Make no mis­take: the cin­e­mat­ic slack­er has come of age.