After spending the better part of a career making movies about faltering misanthropes, Noah Baumbach delivered the most upbeat film of his career with Frances Ha, thanks in large part to Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote and stars as a happy-go-lucky New Yorker struggling to master basic life skills. Over the past half-decade—heck, over the past two decades—American independent cinema has been overstocked with poignant comedies about quirky arrested adolescents, but Gerwig turns her Frances into more than just a collection of tics and flaws. She’s like everyone’s college best friend: a funny, chatty person whom everyone pities a little, though not enough to keep helping her out. Baumbach adjusts his style to fit his star, making a movie that feels like he just followed Gerwig’s Frances around the city (and elsewhere) for a year, so he could keep cutting to quick lines like, “I tried to make a frittata, but it’s really more of a scramble”— amusing fragments of dialogue that define the character. -Noel Murray
No comments:
Post a Comment