Frances Ha

Is it a sign of middle age that the lives of aimless 27 year-olds seem generationally different from me, when, in all fairness, I also made foolish choices and had no direction until I was, like, 30? Actually I had direction; but just because I was executing on a plan (career, marriage) doesn't mean I had my shit together. It just means that my regrettable choices were well-organized. 

Frances Ha is like Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach challenged themselves to tell the story of a hopeless case who refuses to take care of herself...and still have sympathy for her. After I got over my reflexive judgment of twenty-something Millennials in New York, I began to enjoy Frances Ha for its (mostly) show-not-tell character study. 

There's something about indie movies on a budget that I find rewarding. Actual location shooting. Shooting inside real apartments. Talented actors that I've never seen before. A lovely travelling shot of Frances running down a city street that plainly was shot from the roof of a van, but also perfectly choreographed to a Bowie song. The camera turns to reveal Frances running just as the drums enter "Modern Love".

After I saw Seabiscuit, I wrote "motion pictures were invented to film horses racing" and I gotta say, an actress running down a city street while the camera paces her is a special effact. It's Production Value.

Sometimes I miss the total absence of closeups. I am used to long master shots as budget-savers in indie movies, but it does make the actors job harder.

I enjoyed the brisk passage of time - the story advances weeks and months in a simple shot or two with unfussy economy. 

Does the movie suffer from too many metaphors for Frances's personality, head space, socioeconomic rut?

• Cooking eggs for her new, seemingly rich friends;
• Chaotically seeking an ATM for cash to pay for dinner because she can't do banking;
• Soaking in the tub far too long to avoid thinking about life

I kept asking myself why Frances didn't just get a job at Starbucks. No one in her circle talks about straight jobs. Is this her foolish refusal to abandon an aesthetic life? She doesn't seem satisfied to be a starving artist - she eats too much for that. Or is it just youthful ignorance of reality. When her mentor, full of unspoken empathy and kindly mom energy, offers her a straight job to help ends meet, the best possible lifeline, Frances shifts uncomfortably and nearly whines "that sounds hard". Every time she is forced to reveal her hopelessness, she instead lies about new prospects. 

These were moments when they almost lost me -moments where I cringed so hard I nearly turned away from the screen. The dinner conversation with Mamie Gummer and friends, for example, was masterfully written. 

The ending felt abrupt and unearned, like they knew where the movie should end up but ran out of time or imagination to get it there. I'm going to give Frances Ha a little bump because I'm a Gen Xer with little patience for people like Frances. My Stub Hubby Grade B minus.

On Netflix, United Airlines flight Newark to Las Vegas