It's rare to find a movie as charming as Frances Ha. Frances (Greta Gerwig) is all over the place. She and her best friend and roommate Sophie (Mickey Sumner) share a Brooklyn apartment and many silly good times, even joking “we are like the lesbian couple who don’t have sex anymore.” That is, until Sophie gets a new boyfriend (and with that, a new living arrangement) leaving Frances both literally and emotionally adrift in New York. And so begins Frances' journey as she goes from apartment to apartment, each time traveling farther and farther away from where she started. She goes to Sacramento to visit her parents. She goes to Paris simply to enjoy the city. Everything and nothing happens to Frances, but she never loses the spiritual buoyancy that draws us to her.
The high point of Frances Ha is undoubtedly Greta Gerwig, who carries the whole film as the protagonist and co-writer. She is in the last hour of her post-adolescent twilight, and determined to make them last. But unlike her other cinematic counterparts (often deemed "quirky", though I hate that word), Gerwig makes Frances more real, more of a character you could easily seek out in New York. She has a free-feeling indomitable spirit that's alluring, but she also has flaws that we recognize. Mickey Sumner is also a standout, the friend we all have who is determined to be an adult, not quite sour but no longer the adolescently sweet person we were once attracted to. She makes Sophie the ideal counterpoint to our wonderfully nerdy Frances, constantly annoyed and occasionally hostile towards her friend’s... Frances-ness. The writing is not perfect, viewers will occasionally stumble across a stilted or forced line, but overall Frances Ha is just as charming and lovable as its protagonist, something those of us forced to grow up can tenderly relate to.
The high point of Frances Ha is undoubtedly Greta Gerwig, who carries the whole film as the protagonist and co-writer. She is in the last hour of her post-adolescent twilight, and determined to make them last. But unlike her other cinematic counterparts (often deemed "quirky", though I hate that word), Gerwig makes Frances more real, more of a character you could easily seek out in New York. She has a free-feeling indomitable spirit that's alluring, but she also has flaws that we recognize. Mickey Sumner is also a standout, the friend we all have who is determined to be an adult, not quite sour but no longer the adolescently sweet person we were once attracted to. She makes Sophie the ideal counterpoint to our wonderfully nerdy Frances, constantly annoyed and occasionally hostile towards her friend’s... Frances-ness. The writing is not perfect, viewers will occasionally stumble across a stilted or forced line, but overall Frances Ha is just as charming and lovable as its protagonist, something those of us forced to grow up can tenderly relate to.