After finishing a class on Hollywood and the Civil War in which I watched for the first time Gone with the Wind — a movie that was much more agreeable despite its length than I would have expected — I am still of the conviction that a small movie has as much appeal as the Hollywood blockbuster. Frances Ha, which the Mrs. and I watched over the weekend, arguably has more charm on a much smaller scale than most of Hollywood’s major productions.
It is movie about a young woman who is struggling to find her way in New York City as a dancer without great talent or a level head. What keeps Frances going is a close friendship with another woman, Sophie, who has a decent job but is easily prone to poor decisions under the influence of romance. When Sophie, with whom Frances shares an apartment, falls for a man and moves in with him, their friendship hits the rocks and Frances needs to find a place to live in an expensive city with few prospects for making enough to pay the rent. She eventually loses her position as a minor player in a dance company, cannot afford to live in the city, and barely holds on to her dignity. To keep it she foolishly takes a weekend trip to Paris that she pays for with a credit card that some lender offers to sucker her into paying interest.
Rather than being a sad tale or a story of the triumph of the human spirit — Frances does eventually prevail in an ordinary way — Frances Ha is a simple narrative about young adults and what they go through before achieving a measure of maturity stability. It has the feel of a Whit Stillman movie, like Last Days of Disco. It also resembles the characters in Lena Dunham’s HBO series, Girls, except that Frances and Sophie are not nearly as sexually depraved or bored as Hannah and Marnie. The movie is shot in black and white, and several of the sequences resemble images from the heyday of French movies from the period of Francois Truffaut’s influence in which Frances skips or runs through the streets of New York, either in a state of glee (having recently received a rebate check from the IRS) or panic (needing to find an ATM to pay for a meal at a restaurant that does not take debit cards).
Again, it is a small film. But rather than highlighting the particular temptations that afflict young women either in the days of disco dance clubs or during the sexually charged ethos of the hookup culture, Francis Ha explores the age old theme of friends who see their relationship threatened by boyfriends or jobs. It feels as much like my own experience while living with a good friend who started to spend more time with a girlfriend than with me — can you believe it? — or my wife’s own disappointments as a twenty-something with a best friend/roommate who vacated the friendship and apartment for the charms of a man.
It is not brilliant. Nor is it profound. But in its own charming way, Frances Ha shows the joys and sorrows of life between the order provided by parents and college and the stability of an income and the ability to pay your way. If you do not care for chick flicks or movies low in special affects, Frances Ha will likely disappoint. But if ordinary life has enough affect for you, it is a movie well worth seeing (as is Noah Baumbach’s other films, The Squid and the Whale, and Greenberg).
Old Life 