Tagline:
N/A

Wide Release Date:
May 17, 2013

Directed by:
Noah Baumbach
Written by:
Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig
Produced by:
Noah Baumbach, Scott Rudin, Lila Yacoub, Rodrigo Teixeira

Starring:
Greta Gerwig
Mickey Sumner
Adam Driver
Michael Zegen

PREGAME THOUGHTS

Again, another recommendation off the heels of the Normal People miniseries I guess want to watch twentysomethings flounder their way through their lives with little direction or abandon. I only vaguely know Greta Gerwig because of the Barbie movie. And Mickey Sumner is Sting’s daughter? lol

THE 400(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Frances Halladay (Greta Gerwig) is 27 years old and lives in New York City. She has a non-lesbianic relationship with her, for all intents and purposes, life partner, Sophie (Mickey Sumner). When Sophie breaks the news to Frances that she plans on moving to her “dream neighborhood” Tribeca with another friend, Frances starts getting antsy and restless. Since Frances works as an aspiring dancer (apprentice), she can longer afford her apartment. She relocates to Chinatown and moves in with a couple of hipster guy friends Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen). There’s minor amounts of sexual tension between Frances and Benji, but he keeps joking about her being too “undatable” as a defense mechanism against, I don’t know, fucking.

Benji looks like some Mad Men twerp.

As Sophie grows closer to her boyfriend Patch (Patrick Heusinger), Frances gets more disgruntled. She learns from her dance company that they don’t need Frances to work the Christmas show, which she was counting on to afford her share of the rent. She returns to her family in Sacramento for Christmas and catches up with old friends.

When Frances returns, she shares an apartment with fellow dancer Rachel (Grace Gummer). In typical Frances fashion, she is incredibly awkward and off-putting around Rachel’s friends! She learns that Sophie and Patch are relocating to Tokyo, which really fucks Frances up. She decides to visit Paris for a weekend for no reason, just on a whim. Nothing at all happens there. She sleeps in until 4pm and spends the rest of the trip bored. Frances decides to return to Vassar, her alma mater, and work as a waitress and an RA.

Sophie and Patch show up during an alumni event where Frances is working. Frances learns that the two are engaged, but they start fighting in front of her. Sophie gets too drunk and Frances lets her stay in her dorm room. Sophie admits that she had a miscarriage in Tokyo. She also admits that she isn’t happy with Patch. MAYBE THEY CAN PATCH THINGS UP HAH HAHAHA LMAO. The next morning, Frances wakes up to a note left by Sophie. She returned to New York City. Frances then returns to New York City as well, sad and broken and poor.

EPILOGUE! Sorta. Frances gets a job as a choreographer and a bookkeeper. She reconciles with Sophie. She rents her own apartment, and prepares a slip of paper with her name on it for the downstairs mailbox. Her full name “Frances Halladay” doesn’t fit on the front of the mailbox, so she folds it over so it says “Frances Ha”.

Hey, that’s the name of the movie!

Ha…

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — General Movie Thoughts

I wanted to like this movie. It checked a few boxes: indie sensibilities, pretentious black-and-white cinematography, hipster/bohemian characters, all-dialogue-no-action. In fact, I did like half this movie! Barely! The other half I most definitely did not like. Overall, I thought the movie was quite boring.

Similar to The Worst Person in the World, Frances Ha portrays a young woman at a crossroads between young adulthood and, like, real adulthood. Since I basically followed a career/family life path since the age of about four-fucking-years-old, I didn’t have this stage in my late 20s where I restlessly bounced around life with uncertainty and lack of focus. In fact, my life was stifling with extreme focus. I maybe would have preferred a little bit of a fidgety quarter-life crisis before I got married and had kids. It seems more productive and reasonable. I would’ve bought a house in Berrien Springs, Michigan and put a whole bunch of gnomes on my lawn to please the neighbors.

Ask me why I’m still watching this movie!

This restless uncertainty doesn’t make for a compelling movie in this case. Frances’ pillar is her best friend Sophie, and once Sophie moves from Brooklyn to Tribeca there’s an endless series of Frances lurching through a temporarily directionless life. She visits her family and friends in Sacramento for Christmas, which is an overlong montage of awkwardness and a lack of plot-forwarding character development. She moves in with fellow dancer Rachel, which is an overlong montage of awkwardness and a lack of plot-forwarding character development. She visits Paris alone, which is… you get the picture.

Gerwig’s portrayal of Frances toes the line between endearing and annoying. She says what’s on her mind without thinking, and a great absence of social grace tells me that she might be on the spectrum. Totally cringey and weird. Of course, Sumner’s portrayal is deliberately similar. So that’s two main characters acting equal parts endearing and annoying. Adam Driver as Lev is way more annoying than endearing, but he has very little screen time. Michael Zegen as Benji is dreadfully annoying. That covers everyone! What a great cast!

TOPIC 2 — Adjustment After College

OK, I lied. After about 27 years of college, I graduated and moved to Chicago at age 23. While my then-girlfriend now-wife spent her days in an unpaid teaching internship, I spent my days procrastinating on finding a job while our savings account dwindled away as each day passed. Were you ever unemployed in October after spending your whole life up to that point in school? It was bizarre to feel the autumn chill setting in and the leaves changing color while I sat around the fucking apartment eating eggs and ramen noodles and listening to podcasts and maybe applying to a job if I felt like it that day. Talk about anxious and aimless. I suppose I do know how that feels.

I spent a lot of my unemployed months in the tub, so I guess I can relate to something here.

It never got better, either. Day in, day out, I tried my best to spend as little money as possible while hauling my unemployed ass to the library on a bi-daily basis in order to try to stay productive. I don’t think I fell into a depression, but I went to bed at 5am and woke up at 3pm every day. AND I never felt good until it got dark outside. AND I didn’t really do anything all day except listen to music while playing flash games and reading Something Awful. I didn’t even watch TV. I didn’t even read. I didn’t do nuthin’.

It all worked out in the end, though! I, too, hung out with friends to try to get my mind off of things. I remember for Easter I visited home with no end date on when to return to Chicago. There was a certain freedom about it that I miss, and if I knew that things were going to work out I would’ve spent that nine months lightening up a little bit and having a little more fun. Oh well! Just call me Tom Ha.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Was shot as low-key & covertly as possible on New York City streets under the title “Untitled Digital Workshop.”
How covert can you really be shooting a feature film? With key grips and best boys running around everywhere?! It’s chaos!

Greta Gerwig is in every scene of the movie.
No wonder this movie was a piece of shit. Ha!

The one on the left is Sting’s daughter. You can tell because of the phony Jamaican accent and the standing in Stewart Copeland’s shadow.

Director/co-writer Noah Baumbach shot the movie in black and white to “boil it down to its barest bones,” and create an immediate “history” & “a kind of instant nostalgia.”
Sounds like someone forgot to order a box of film ink is what it sounds like to me. I know how the film industry works.

At the end of the movie, when Frances is filling out her name for her mailbox, it’s briefly revealed that the “Ha” that makes up part of her last name “Halladay.”
THIS IS NOT TRIVIA. IS ANYONE VETTING THE IMDB TRIVIA PAGES? IT’S CHAOS!

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

I don’t think so. I’m not down on movies I don’t relate to very well, but I think Frances Ha is a little too dull to make up for its themes of uncertainty and aimlessness. Watch it if you like a protagonist that makes every social interaction incredibly cringey. I don’t!

Or if you like Adam Driver’s ugly face.

Yuck.