Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's "Frances Ha"

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-05-08/film/greta-gerwig-isn-t-your-average-it-girl/

uh, did we know that Baumbach divorced Jennifer Jason Leigh soon after Greenberg, and that he and Gerwig are now a couple? Bet he gets less shit about it than Thurston Moore.

Anyway, cautiously optimistic on the new one, GG deserves to be the first mumblecore-hatched star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9YKHRQkf7k

I didn't how to feel about'em after reading The New Yorker profile.

http://youtu.be/g87Zn-VT7K4

this looks really up my alley tbh

I didn't how to feel about'em after reading The New Yorker profile.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 9, 2013 10:16 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, baumbach came off like a v. inscrutable guy.

I like that GG feels compelled to point out that this film was hatched before Girls hit HBO. Cuz the culture can only accept one type of young woman in Brooklyn.

didn't mind his hair though

I loved Greenberg. Psyched about this.

this looks really up my alley tbh

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, May 9, 2013 10:18 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

looks like a "feel-good" remake of hannah takes the stairs

lemme just google that bad boy... haha whoa, thats not a good thing at all!!

I like that GG feels compelled to point out that this film was hatched before Girls hit HBO. Cuz the culture can only accept one type of young woman in Brooklyn.

― ballin' from Maine to Mexico (Dr Morbius), Thursday, May 9, 2013 10:20 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or maybe because the precious bonsai children of new york are already overrepresented in popular culture

ty

and also this movie sounds a lot like one of the subplots of Girls and the main character bears certain similarities to hannah horvath and the movie features adam driver

fun fact: "The Drama of the Gifted Child" was originally to be titled "The Drama of the Narcissistic Child" but the author realized it wouldn't sell that way.

well yeah there's that too, but not having ever seen Girls i can't swear to any similarities aside from one actor.

the precious bonsai children of new york

this pleases me

I think you mean 'escapees from flyover country'

greenberg was so good, so perfect, so greenberg

I like Baumbach's stuff but leaving yr wife for a younger woman just after she gave birth to your baby is nagl

interesting artist is an asshole film at 11

maybe baumbach's a bit of a greenberg, the movie makes even more sense to me now

greenberg was kind of ok but damn it had such a myopic view of la

good.

hungry4whites

What L.A. movie besides The Long Goodbye doesn't?

repo man

Noah Baumbach Greta Gerwig Ben Stiller - Repo Man

My brother and I quote Greenberg the way high schoolers used to quote Anchorman. Favs include "I'm thinking of getting back into drugs" and "I'm just trying to do nothing for a while." This movie is a cult classic by now, no? I liked the interview with Greta Gerwig fwiw. Also I cant really blame anyone for falling for New Chloe Sevigny... that seems like a personal matter.

I like Baumbach's stuff but leaving yr wife for a younger woman just after she gave birth to your baby is nagl

This is probably my most-anticipated film of 2013.

The Squid and the Whale was way better than Greenberg, which was itself really good, so I'm looking forward to this, Baumbach douchiness notwithstanding.

i think the baumbach divorce thing looks bad from the outside, but we don't know what was actually going on in their marriage so i am going to withhold judgement.

I'm waiting for the kid to grow up and make a movie about it. Due in 2040 or so?

lol @ this, fuck baumbach

"Soon after shooting wrapped[on Greenberg], the director emailed Gerwig, asking her what she thought was going on in the hearts and minds of people her age"

lololol

More like in the pants amirite.

The trailer is the worst kind of nineties dr(lol)oll indie romcom.

i wish that line worked if you weren't old, and a fancy movie director

it does look super 90s. im cool with that

Yeah I'm looking foward seeing this. Love GeeGee.

way better than the G.G. we had in the 90s

Ha. Were you around back then, Treeship?

lol no. i'm 24. i know of g.g. allin from the todd philips documentary.

Well, at least thanks to this thread I now know who actually watches movies like this for pleasure—I saw the trailer and it made me want to track down everyone involved and set them on fire one at a time.

it shows girls dancing to express their love of life

誤訳侮辱, you should try Girls.

誤訳侮辱, what are your thoughts on Woody Allen?

alf didnt u love damsels in distress

誤訳侮辱, you should try Girls.

Does it have car chases, gunfire, explosions, and people getting punched in the face? Because those are the common factors of the TV shows I watch.

誤訳侮辱, what are your thoughts on Woody Allen?

I've only seen three of his movies (Annie Hall, Sleeper and Love and Death) and I hated all three. They had a disturbing lack of car chases, gunfire, explosions etc.

I do like Whit Stillman's movies, though...

in love and death, did you at least like woody's dance with Death during the end credits?

actually, that's an irrelevant point. nothing in girls or baumbach's films are like that. frances ha is probably not for you.

the freeze frame of Garwig's face in the first post is the most frightening image I've seen all year -- maybe since all these straight boys thought what's her name in 50 Days of Summer was cute.

why do you think indie dreamgirls are so terrible? i understand the feminist complaint that often, in films like 500 days, they are just a vehicle for the male characters to achieve self-awareness/happiness/something, but that doesn't seem to be the deal with this movie as gerwig is the main character. just curious. people h8 zooey and i never really understood why, even though i am not a fan of she and him.

Indie dreamgirls are feminized versions of their male indie writer-directors. Julie Delpy of the Before series is the most successfully realized, I think: her insecurities are her own.

Aren't most female characters feminized versions of their writer-directors? I know I haven't been able to escape that in my short films.
I don't think it is a trend exclusive to indie girls. In this case, Baumbach is just very specific with his lines so there is no room for actresses like GG to breathe.

Julie Delpy of the Before series is the most successfully realized, I think: her insecurities are her own.

She's been a co-writer on the second and third movies.

yep

I think to be fair to Girls here, I do not get the impression from having only watched season 1 of girls that Dunham would write the "girls dancing to show love of life" scene - in fact I kind of picture her doing that mime finger-down-throat thing at it.

doesnt that exact scene happen in girls season 1

yeah you're right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8_ssvjnNYg

but somehow much less bad

That's the most I've ever seen of Girls and it just proves that people who like Robyn should be shunned.

ur dumb that scene's awesome

love gerwig, ambivalent at best about baumbach (loved greenberg though), new yorker profile was a depressing read though there was the hilarious revelation that baumbach and wes anderson dine w/ bogdanovich and regard him as a mentor and father figure (to the extent of him calling them 'son'), i kept getting the faintest whiff of that horace mann story from it, what a fitting circle jerk.

Bogdo still trying to ingratiate himself into financing

saw this back at TIFF, it's much much better than Greenberg (thankfully)

that wasn't exactly one of my favorite scenes in season 1, but it's not terrible

Bogdo still trying to ingratiate himself into financing

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, May 11, 2013 9:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and all he gets are these lousy* dvd supplements...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQPzzNhqGCo

*which is too strong a word. You just wish they were talking about a better movie.

so GG is clearly NB's Cybill Shepherd

o come now, she's a much better actress than cybill shepherd was circa bogdanovich (if not circa moonlighting).

I was alluding to the leaving-yr-wife/collaborator-for-yr-star aspect

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/movies/greta-gerwig-in-noah-baumbachs-frances-ha.html?hpw

“There’s no heterosexual relationship in it,” Ms. Gerwig said. “There’s no kissing.” Instead, the movie chronicles Frances’ flirtation with adulthood and her subsequent fall from perpetual adolescent grace. “I’m so embarrassed,” Frances says. “I’m not a real person yet.”

What would be the present day equivalent of Cybil's Cole Porter album for GG? Carole King?

Cyndi Lauper.

Who is their Orson Welles?

don't forget Cybill did a Cole Porter MOVIE for Bogdanovich

(that finished a whole buncha things)

Who is their Orson Welles?

― tokyo rosemary, Sunday, May 12, 2013 9:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bogdanovich, no? Apparently Baumbach is also tight w/De Palma (he interviewed him for a featurette on the CC Blow-Out, which included allusions to them hanging out). However BDP is still working regularly, so...Captain Ascot it is!

rosie bogdanovich is their orson welles :(

every millenial is their own orson welles

wow so i'd heard bogdanovich ran a 'letter of apology' after at long last love flopped but i never knew it was THIS (pretty far from apologetic):

http://www.thelmagazine.com/images/blogimages/2011/06/17/1308330989-bogdanovichloveletter.jpg

what a fucking schmuck

btw anyone w/ any curiosity about at long last love, thinking a fiasco that legendary must be somehow inadvertantly entertaining, do not bother. it is one dreary turd of a movie. can't even begin to imagine what his daisy miller was like.

this is great

i really liked it

how much dancing?

Oh, I hope Bogdanovich moves in with them and starts ranting about Fudgesicles.

really loved the trip to paris part.

Bogdanovich should endorse a line of celebrity ascots.

Yeah, this was pretty great; think I liked it even more than Damsels in Distress.

yeah... yeah!!! suck it johny crunmch

*farts*

This is a ridiculously charming movie, which means that some people will find ridiculously irritating but screw those people.

I can see why they wanted to emphasise that it germinated before Girls because the territory's very similar except the characters are 10x more likeable.

i've seen bogdanovich's 'daisy miller,' it's as boring as you'd expect, tho cybill s. is pretty well cast.

except the characters are 10x more likeable.

kind of a low bar there, but point made.

2 very different takes on this I read:

Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha achieves something that is rare in cinema. It creates a distinct, internally consistent world, fully populated with vivid characters. Unfortunately, those characters are fucking hipsters.

“I Internet-acquired three very rare Ray-Bans. I had a great day.” I don’t know anybody who talks like that, and I have to give props to what may be the film's most almost-likeable character, but this is the world Baumbach delivers. From The Squid and the Whale (which I liked) to Greenberg, the director tends to fill his movies with insufferable boors. Many hail this new film as a delightful mid-career course correction. But from the movie's opening frame, the spoiled man- and woman-children of Frances Ha operate in a precious, blinkered milieu, selfish and largely unsympathetic even when they aren't urinating in public. http://dcist.com/2013/05/out_of_frame_frances_ha.php

versus:

Baumbach has created a fey, sneakily charming generational touchstone on a par with “Annie Hall” and his own Gen Y col-grad comedy “Kicking and Screaming.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/frances-ha-movie-review/2013/05/22/93746ee2-c115-11e2-8bd8-2788030e6b44_story.html

in what universe was kicking and screaming gen y

this is so much better than Kicking and Screaming.

what balls said

anyone who actually complains about "fucking hipsters" doesn't deserve to write for a living

when i hear the word 'hipster' i reach for my...

think the first reviewer might have missed the intended ridiculousness of the ray bans comment, and also that there's no way that guy is the films most almost-likeable character

Sigh at people who dislike films because 'uh I didn't like the characters'.

i haven't read this thread but is this movie mumblecore

I know a mumblecore movie when I see one, by the title. this is a mumblecore movie.

so why ask

#mumblecore

i think the answer tells you what kind of an excuse you have to look at greta gerwig

After a cringe-y start, it was okay.

http://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/frances-ha/

Eh fuck it -- it was good, better than his other films except Squid.

Indie dreamgirls are feminized versions of their male indie writer-directors. Julie Delpy of the Before series is the most successfully realized, I think: her insecurities are her own.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, May 11, 2013 5:39 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure whats going on up here but gerwig seems decided not an indie dream girl, shes not super attractive and is generally just way too realistic, anyway this looks p rad im looking forward to it

also she co-wrote the movie and wasn't an object of romantic longing for any character in the film, so the term "dream girl" wouldn't fit, unless she is supposed to be the audience's "dream girl". in this sense idk... i disagree with lagoon because i think she is very attractive and in this film is completely endearing, but not in a way that seems to cater to any sort of male fantasy. i don't think frances is obviously a product of a male imagination, directly or indirectly, even though this film is in many ways a millenial update of Manhattan.

She's arguably an object of romantic longing for Benji, but I agree that she makes good on her plea of "undateable" and bravo to her, et al.

fwiw not trying say gerwig is hideously disfigured or anything just shes in the normal attractive person range not the zoey deschanel/natalie portman special professional beautiful actor one

natalie portman is meh

i can totally get not being into her, she doesnt personally really move me, but she is obviously perfectly formed

i just think maybe gwyneth paltrow works better in the "special professional beautiful actor"/"perfectly formed" role. i actually sort of RESENT how perfect-looking gwyneth is.

yeah i just mentioned portman and zoey cause they are indie dream girls, anyway i think gerwig is compelling for being a more ordinary person, her acting/general vibe feels realistic too

natalie, zooey, gwyneth, and greta are all perfect-looking to me tbh although i can see how greta doesn't conform as perfectly to contemporary beauty standards as the other three. love natalie portman btw... don't get the hate. i might be a bigger fan of black swan than most people though, and more forgiving of garden state.

but yeah... gerwig's shtick is more like diane keaton's in that it is based on the idiosyncrasies of her personality.

Keaton was stunning in a way GG probably won't ever be.

GG's presence in FH is so odd that I'm having trouble thinking whom she evokes or reminds me of.

it occurred to me that the boyfriend (adam?) in "girls" is kind of a manic pixie dream guy, no?

I think he's an indie "it" guy but this movie is the only place i can think of where he was dreamy. On Girls his character can be pretty dark at times, and is always a little "off" and not in a cute way.

baumbach seems obsessed with being an old fogey and his difficulties relating to young folk

check plot of his next (?) movie

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1791682/

Looks like a good cast. I love Naomi Watts.

Or maybe i just love Mulholland Drive. Either way i can see her working well in a baumbach film.

would watch a whole movie of Frances and Benji bullshitting

"the spoiled man- and woman-children"

Really very bored of this complaint. I feel like I've read a thousand generic hipster/privilege moans in recent years. If he finds the characters unsympathetic then that's his problem. Maybe he shouldn't watch any movies about middle-class twentysomethings.

This is wrong too. "The most devastating example of this is also the most class-unconscious. How many of us can afford to make the kind of weekend mistake she makes mid-way through the film?"

It's made clear that she hardly has any cash and puts the Paris trip on her Visa, against Benji's advice. And there's an explicit exchange with Benji where he points out that her idea of "poor" isn't poor as most people would understand it.

who wrote that?

feel like this thread should cross-index with the Vampire Weekend one.

"the spoiled man- and woman-children"

is from reviewer Pat Padua at Washington dc site dcist.com, see quote further up thread, Sat. may 25

that convo about what it is to be poor is as much about that character not wanting to admit his own monetary advantage compared to frances as it is about him offering a convincing reprimand. at least that's how I saw it. feel like I've read a couple reviews where that line was called out for providing perspective without acknowledging the sort of dickish way that guy uses that line.

xpost

True he uses it to make himself look better but it's still accurate - she's not exactly poor, as we see when she goes home to her family in California, but she feels poor in NYC. It felt to me like a way of acknowledging the class/privilege issue while saying that these aren't absolutes but degrees. It suggested to me that Baumbach & Gerwig felt compelled to grasp the privilege nettle in a way that, say, Woody Allen or Whit Stillman didn't.

whit stillman addresses it kind of compulsively, albeit not in a satisfying or very smart way IMO

OK, my memory of Stillman may be failing me. The way it's done in Frances Ha feels very much like a reaction to the current discourse though - almost like they saw how much shit Lena Dunham got and thought, oh, we'd better insert a quick bit about relative privilege to get people off our backs.

The privilege conversation surrounding Girls etc. is ridiculous. Most characters in movies, esp rom com type things, are privileged people just don't like the idea of people (like hannah hovarth, frances) who have things they didn't "earn" in the marketplace, which implies that there are people - the professional class - who deserve their privilege. Basically i think this kind of anti-hipsterism is reactionary bc it wants to conceal the arbitrary basis of inequality in capitalist societies.

but plenty of movies/TV shows feature "professionals" too

i feel that girls and other shows are generally more canny than their critics recognize

but i think folks have a right to be sick of seeing certain types of characters

guess I should check out "Girls," eh

Social status of characters is only a small part of what makes a movie, I wish it didn't get that unreasonable amount of attention. Also, I don't think we are overdosing on Hannah and Frances types of characters, to begin with.

actually it tends to get ignored in American movies or "taken for granted." Stillman and Baumbach are unique in this regard (Linklater too, although I have to think about him for a moment).

Yeah I was being unclear, I meant: for Girls and Frances Ha, I wish it didn't get that unreasonable amount of attention.

privilege as a meme

i've kind of had it with the 'manic pixie dream girl' critique, tbh.

like i feel like it was useful for a while but at some point it stopped being used to convey actual criticism and basically just turned into 'aha, another MPDG!'

privilege is often relative, and I say that as a white employed New Yorker w/ cancer & health insurance.

really loved this movie -- it had a purity of intent and execution that was surprising, given its DANGEROUS subject matter of privileged white ppl/brooklyn/late-20's/ennui.

kind of like NB and GG just ignored the potential pitfalls and avoided the super-self-consciousness of reference, and just made a really nice movie.

"privilege as a meme" in these contexts (criticism, that is) pretty much seems to operate as a wedge you can drive between yourself and your own perceived inauthenticity. hence its inexhaustible appeal--calling out privilege is like immunizing yourself against your own social milieu. (again, just in this context.)

no one's mentioned how great Dean + Britta looked

Don't they always.

Tonight/Friday at the Angelika in suburban Virginia near W. D.C.

JOIN US FRI 5/31 FOLLOWING THE 7:30PM SHOW FOR A SKYPE Q&A WITH STAR & CO-WRITER GRETA GERWIG

"privilege as a meme" in these contexts (criticism, that is) pretty much seems to operate as a wedge you can drive between yourself and your own perceived inauthenticity. hence its inexhaustible appeal--calling out privilege is like immunizing yourself against your own social milieu. (again, just in this context.)

― ryan, Tuesday, May 28, 2013 3:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otmfm

The privilege conversation surrounding Girls etc. is ridiculous. Most characters in movies, esp rom com type things, are privileged people just don't like the idea of people (like hannah hovarth, frances) who have things they didn't "earn" in the marketplace, which implies that there are people - the professional class - who deserve their privilege. Basically i think this kind of anti-hipsterism is reactionary bc it wants to conceal the arbitrary basis of inequality in capitalist societies.

― Treeship, Tuesday, May 28, 2013 11:56 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this also seems right. I don't know if it's "ridiculous", but the particular American dislike for "unearned" wealth/freedom/leisure doesn't really come out of any radical critique of class or wealth inequality, but out of a feeling that these things don't comport with the meritocracy we believe we live in, and with the protestant work ethic.

cant wait to watch FraHa

NoBau GreGer FraHa

otm

What is a gabbneb baby????

waterface.....

baumbach makes another movie about bored rich people milling about. can't wait.

though on further reflection maybe it's an indictment of me that i've been friends with/dated character types from all his movies ... maybe i'll see this.

sounds like u have a... spectrum of thoughts on this film

you could be right, hungry

though on further reflection maybe it's an indictment of me that i've been friends with/dated character types from all his movies ... maybe i'll see this.

no it is an indictment that you've dated women like Frances Ha.

baumbach makes another movie about bored rich people milling about. can't wait.

― Spectrum, Friday, May 31, 2013 2:02 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you seem to be bored and milling about, are you rich?

tbf most good movies are abt bored rich people milling about

gotta chuck Austen, Eliot, James, Trollope in the toilet.

you seem to be bored and milling about, are you rich?

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Friday, May 31, 2013 3:06 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i piss liquid gold. i'm like an x-man mutant, it's a pretty horrible thing to live with.

I prefer ecstatic rich people prancing hither and thither

gonna see this tomorrow.

pain & gain already left theaters here, so i guess this is what's left.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/you-havent-seen-frances-ha-until-youve-seen-it-in,32634/

It's funny because one of the two places it's screening at here just opened and one of their main selling points is having enormous screens in all their auditoriums.

really really liked this

tbf most good movies are abt bored rich people milling about

otm

really loved the trip to paris part.

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Monday, May 13, 2013 9:27 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

loved how mundane it was, perfectly captures that vibe of when u fly someplace for no reason and have nothing to do there

i just saw it. felt like it was kind of average, maybe slightly above-average, instance of a kind of film that i generally don't like very much. accordingly, i chuckled a few times and was charmed by a few scenes that were basically above-average versions of scenes i've seen in movies-like-this, but was mostly kind of restless and occasionally irritated.

i give it one pfffffft.

should have seen the croods at the dollar cinema.

maybe adults-who-talk-like-children is sociologically accurate but boy does it wear on me

best part of movie was this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GkwIRbLw8

..and then he had to ruin it by playing it again, in an ironic mode, as a kind of punchline.

i think baumy has a great knack for observing human behavior

was that the species?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geVZYCcAdBc

i just saw it. felt like it was kind of average, maybe slightly above-average, instance of a kind of film that i generally don't like very much. accordingly, i chuckled a few times and was charmed by a few scenes that were basically above-average versions of scenes i've seen in movies-like-this, but was mostly kind of restless and occasionally irritated.

it's a sharp sociological study -- I know MEN like this. But the pleasure isn't simply mimetic: I think he got off laughs at their expense while still retaining affection for the type. And, most importantly, it's 86 minutes long.

but I don't think Manhattan is a great film either so

You're completely insane

stick your head in a trough, waterboy

otm re: manhattan

i think waterface is otm in regard to manhattan. although i don't know if it's a great film or if i just love it, and whether or not i should make a distinction between these two things.

'noah baumbach' and 'greta gerwig's fraces ha

Laughed a lot at the "How about we fake fight?" scene.

Loved how this felt more like an unpredictable short story or novella than a more standard screenplay. Ad the black-and-white brought me back to seeing Stranger Than Paradise, She's Gotta Have It, etc., at the arthouse as a teenager (saw it at a mainstream-arty multiplex).

Saw Dean Wareham in the credits. He must've been one of the Paris-convo dinner-party guests, or was he somewhere else?

This also made me think about how people (esp in their 20s) fantasize about compatible roommates as much as true love.

Yes. He stood out because he looked too damn handsome -- and I recognized his voice.

This also made me think about how people (esp in their 20s) fantasize about compatible roommates as much as true love.

For Frances they were one in the same. I found the ending where she's looking across the room like that, so teenage, but she's older than that.

Yeah--and, related to that, the movie reminded me of a kind of early-post-adolesence time of not seeing the overt sexual undercurrents to certain moments, so it was credible that she could loaf around in bed her with her best friend without sensing any tension, and be kind of aware and kind of not to the guy's overt propositions.

the sexlessness was one of Stephanie Zacharek's few complaints.

This also made me think about how people (esp in their 20s) fantasize about compatible roommates as much as true love.

― The End**^ (Eazy), Sunday, June 2, 2013 10:03 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah awesome

The sexlessness was one of the most admirable, real things about the g-d thing!

yeah seriously

this was really great, guess i have to seperate what a corny lech baumbach personally seems like from his work, will do

I'm not sure I want to watch Gerwig having sex tbh

Eric Ha

back when she was at salon zacharek used to complain that every movie was 'sexless.' charles taylor was (of course) even worse.

was interesting to me how fran's overenthusiastic spiel @ the dinner party before she goes to paris abt shared thoughts & eye contact across a party etc etc so closely mirrored hannah in girls near the end of the one mans trash ep. think they both really tap into a specific & true type of neuroticism abt the desire to connect/share experiences

wow mid-life crisis bro was careful not to put his new young girlfriend in any romantic or sexual situations in the movie they made together, he must really love her for her mind

i don't think it matters why romantic plots were avoided, but the fact that they were was something i appreciated about this movie. also, baumbach and gerwig co-wrote this why is everyone assuming baumbach was the major creative force here? if anything, i think the difference between this movie and baumbach's generally bleaker older work points to the strong presence of gerwig.

I can't get past Greta Gerwig being the name of a young person. Greta Gerwig should be the name of some high school friend of my mother's who is always showing up in her pointless stories, and who I never actually meet, or maybe meet once when I'm 12 at a dinner party my parents throw and she's in town "Oh great news, Greta Gerwig is coming!"

old-fashioned names are hip again. my cousin just had a kid and named her millicent.

wow, that's taking it far

are Muriel Spark's novels hits with the smart set or

all the cool young actresses are named eunice kranmer these days

Seems weird to complain about sexlessness. I like the way the film prioritises friendship over romance (and passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours) and avoids the MPDG trap. It would be hard to introduce a relationship for Frances without rendering the movie much less interesting and making you wonder if the guy she falls for is proxy Baumbach.

I'm not sure I want to watch Gerwig having sex tbh

You haven't seen Greenberg then.

I brushed my teeth during that scene.

That was a good scene if you like bleak slapstick humor

greta gerwig's middle name is celeste

(Making the rounds on Tumblr)

http://24.media.tumblr.com/2f9b69b6092ee1d7d37aae03d182b691/tumblr_mnvpcuPXer1qz7gtqo1_500.gif

Frances Ha is Playing At Your House

james murphy's life seems pretty great

'noah baumbach' and 'greta gerwig's fraces ha

― Lamp, Sunday, June 2, 2013 2:06 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark

wanna know what u think lamp

haha whoa

User Reviews

"Francis Ha" Is Nothing To Laugh About
(1 star out of 10) 6 May 2013 | by kiss_trigger-570-471334 (United States) – See all my reviews
Baumbach is the Bed, Bath, and Beyond of indie, his newest film resembling the tacky ten dollar pre-framed black and white photos of vague French "bohemian" cityscapes that you buy and hang in a dirty insurance office's bathroom to distract you from the smell and the crack in the wall. Films whose "bitter, angry characters" are stick-figure caricatures embodied by actors neither complex or talented enough to make their character's bitterness or anger anything deeper than a mere external affectation, directed by a clever hipster con artist hiding the heart of his arch conservatism.

Anyone who would hire Ben Stiller ("Greenberg") to play an embittered intellectual railing against the corporate mediocrity of modern life should be, at the very least, highly suspect. Gerwig now stands as the latest media-manufactured "it" girl, an unthreatening and perfectly insipid creature made-to-order for a dead and non-existent counterculture.

Still, Baumbach and his muse are very necessary these days to convince an already euthanized and brainwashed Generation ZZZ that their spiritual, moral, and political malaise is a livable, "charming" and tolerable one, so that they can really, really forgive themselves for not roaring back like a million untamed lions against the state-sponsored execution of their hearts, minds, and souls as previous generations once did, for better or worse. In that sense, Baumbach may become the most cherished of contemporary cinematic frauds, a directorial eunuch as safe and as impotent as the audiences who flock to the flattery of his films rather than by those individuals perceptive enough to be thoroughly repulsed by them.

And put aside those desperate comparisons to the French New Wave, or 70's Woody Allen. What you're seeing on screen is the rotting carcass of a nation's exhausted cinema .... pointless, empty triviality posturing as wry social observation, spewed from the wealthy pockets of a talentless hack with too many inside connections and Taschen art books piled up onto his conspicuously displayed Eames chair.

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Bold anti-hipster stance

that guy also made this thread http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587944/board/nest/209194977

it's a shame those maoist film critics retired

http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/movies/

would have read their review of this film

I would definitely question Frances's anti-imperialist credentials.

noah baumbach did kcrw's guest dj project. i approve of his picks, even/especially the supertramp.

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/gd/gd130605noah_baumbach

That screed gabbneb posted could have been written by Greenberg himself!

wanna know what u think lamp

it's hard to sort out how i feel about 'frances ha' as a film or even like, 'greta gerwig' as person from how i feel about my own life i mean i even just got back from a probably ill-advised trip to europe and so i wasn't really watching very critically. i'm also bored and anxious with portrayals of urban near-adulthood generally, they all seem to occlude the most important or central parts of the xp in some meaningful way, i wonder how much any 'successful' portrayal of this mode is betrayed simply by being 'successful', i think i wanted it more incoherence, more ambivalence, but that probably wouldn't have made it a better movie...

nice.

I haven't seen any of Gerwig's pre-Greenberg mumblecore movies. Aren't they meant to be all about incoherence and ambivalence?

so mickey sumner is stings daughter? huh ok

What you're seeing on screen is the rotting carcass of a nation's exhausted cinema .... pointless, empty triviality posturing as wry social observation, spewed from the wealthy pockets of a talentless hack with too many inside connections and Taschen art books piled up onto his conspicuously displayed Eames chair.

Although I like some Baumbach, this describes how I feel about the bulk of today's "indie" film

Generation ZZZ

this is p good morbsian wordplay ish

"roaring back like a million untamed lions" put it over the top for me

WARNING: The Deep Thoughts of Greta Gerwig, Artiste
by kiss_trigger-570-471334 (Sat May 4 2013 20:22:26) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

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If this is what the American "independent" cinema has come to, it's time for the funeral rites:

“I also think we have to believe in a happy ending,” Gerwig said. “We have to, otherwise what is anybody doing? I always have this frustration that, in a therapeutic sense, it can feel you have one of two ways of relating to your parents: one is you’re in denial, and the other is you can be really angry at them. And I’m, like, there has to be a way in which you just LOVE them.” She continued, “And I feel that there has to be a story that’s true to its marrow and also filled with joy. There has to be that. Otherwise, it’s utterly depressing.”

She went on, “This is lofty”—a lot of emphasis—“but in one of Hamlet’s soliloquies he says, ‘This brave o’erhanging firmament,’ and he’s talking about the air and the stars and how everything is so alive and so beautiful, and at the end of it he says, ‘It means nothing, it means nothing, and I don’t want to live.’ And I’m, like, ‘How can you see everything and then feel that way?’ I always want to find the reverse of that—to see all the darkness and find the light, as opposed to see all the light and resonate with the nothingness.”

by kiss_trigger-570-471334 (Sat May 18 2013 21:59:07) Ignore this User | Report Abuse

UPDATED Sat May 18 2013 23:07:32

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Frances: Were like a lesbian couple that don't have sex.
Sophie: I know, right? But like, if we have sex, then we might threaten
our demographic and Apple product placement deal, and we need to reaffirm
our hetero/traditional orthodoxy under the guise of hip independent film.
Frances: Oh, wow....that's like so self-reflexive...let me think about that.
Sophie: Are we gonna play fight again so we can sublimate our physical desires, while on the surface appearing "cute" and/or "quirky"?
Frances: Oh, wow...this is getting a little too, you know.... meta-Freudian for me, Soph.
Sophie: But you have a BA in psych.
Frances: Yeah, but...I want to be a dancer because I always wanted the legwarmers from "Fame" thing to come back again to hide my fat calves.
Sophie: Let's put on some disco music, which will help with that pop-cultural
retro reference thing in the dialogue and soundtrack, because, you know it's millennial.
Frances: Uh-huh.
Sophie: Yeah.
Frances: It's the story of us, like were in a film of ourselves, while I'm in actuality sleeping with the director in real life to get acting jobs, playing myself playing a version of me in black and white, for no reason, watching myself do the laundry and trying to find a job while dropping fancy author's names and picking my teeth and making quirky facial expressions and then becoming famous for it...you know? I'm a muse.
Sophie: Amused?
Frances: No, a muse.
Sophie: Oh. That's very charming. Your so very charming and eccentric, Frances.
Frances: Does that mean were gonna have sex now?
Sophie: Not at all. We need to focus on money and careers and romantic affairs with boys who remind you of John Paul Belmondo, but in a hip "recession-era" way. But not "Girls".
Frances: You are the man, Sophie. That's rad, another obscure 80's pop reference of outdated expressions for extra-hip quirky charm in the dialogue of like, the movie of our generation of itself, with us...you know?
Sophie: I know.
Frances: Take off your socks.
Sophie: Sex?
Frances: No, socks, silly.
Sophie; Do you think we'd look better in color?
Frances: Probably not.
Sophie: That's so existential.
Frances: Do you want to French kiss, like were in "Breathless" or like, you know, like Noah loves Eric Rohmer and Godard and all those French ticklers he has and he puts them up my..
Sophie: No.
Frances:Ok....ahoy, matey. I'm going to make another quirky noise when you try to touch my shoulder, ok? For restraint's sake, if not outright prudery.
Sophie: Now that's tragic.
Frances: Shakespearean, kinda.
Sophie: Good night, Frances.
Frances: Good night, Sophie.

its v disingenious 2 hold up gerwig & baumbach as some counterculture indie stalwarts, they co-wrote madagascar 3 right? or @ least baumbach did

that said, kiss-trigger shd def come post on ilx

yeah but isn't that kind of how they hold themselves out and how the film industry holds them out?

Ignore this User | Report Abuse | Flag Post | Suggest Ban

old man yells at ruling class 'why dont you be lesbians'

i just learned who greta gerwig was a couple of days ago because i started to read some profile of her that began with an entire paragraph that can be summed up thusly: "it's not hip to like Woody Allen today in NYC but she does and oh her exuberance and her willowy arms will charm you and challenge you simultaneously while you die of a heart attack from her infectious laugh"
then i stopped reading it and GISed to see who this magnificent creature was and i found a normal looking young woman

which was kind of a relief tbh

this lame reps woody allen... oh but her willowy arms

her spirit inferno will charm you until you have been reduced to a heap of ashes on the ground, which she will then resurrect, thereby earning your eternal devotion

I haven't seen any of Gerwig's pre-Greenberg mumblecore movies. Aren't they meant to be all about incoherence and ambivalence?

well i like mumblecore more than i liked 'frances ha', they are also generally not that successful

Is it "not hip to like Woody Allen" in the sense that it's an assumed thing like liking hamburgers or something, or is it actually hip to not like Woody Allen?

its a lame reference, you can like him but not like, like him ime

i imagine some hip people like woody allen while others do not

if you want to be real hip never like anything too much, all in moderation #protip

The wedding blog was funny.

if you want to be real hip never like anything too much, all in moderation #protip

― lag∞n, Thursday, June 6, 2013 11:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this post was alright

i also cite abuse of "modern love" in the trailer

I'm in actuality sleeping with the director in real life to get acting jobs

This is where kiss trigger reveals his hand as a creepy asshole

for some reason I assumed kiss trigger was female

i also cite abuse of "modern love" in the trailer

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Thursday, June 6, 2013 10:43 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well his use of this is a nod to carax's "mauvais sang"

not necessarily a good idea to make an extended reference to a film that is much better than yours

xp Oh, you may be right.

"Many would argue" that worked out fine for Brian De Palma.

not necessarily a good idea to make an extended reference to a film that is much better than yours

can't think of many instances where extended references to films that are much worse than the film in question really worked out tbh

and that dope who made The Artist

xp

yeah I think the power move is almost unquestionably to only make extended references to "classic" but obscure and unpopular films, affirming your supreme taste while elevating your film above the subject of your homage.

still haven't had time to see, but as it opens around the country i'd be curious for compare-and-contrasts with An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. (Thirtyish black Brooklyn boho filmmaker makes drama-doc about his ex)

the thread on that 1 will be less than 250+ posts, i predict

i dunno it came at a point in the movie when i was warming to it a little bit and then it was like, "oh, i could've been watching a leos carax film, couldn't i?"

it's not like baumbach _did_ anything with his reference, it was just sort of _there_

'oh i could've been watching a leos carax film, couldn't i?'

"Film About First World Problems Inspires First-er World Problems (Pictures @ 11)"

like you haven't sat through a crappy movie and thought about what you'd rather be doing instead

assholes

I walked out of Before Sunrise long ago because my friend and I realized we could be sitting and talking instead of stuck in a train compartment with Ethan Hawke hitting on a gal. (Liked/loved the second one, though.)

And there are several writers who deal with privilege in a reasonable, persuasive way but in Britain, at least, this issue has caught fire on Twitter, where it's much easier to get heated and phrase a tweet in a way that sets the discussion spiralling down a more negative ad hominem path.

Oops, wrong thread

You sure, DL?

Also: Teasing, Am, Teasing!

This is a good one... fell down a little in a couple repetitive scenes. I liked Sophie's line “He's a nice guy, you know, for today."

The trailer is the worst kind of nineties dr(lol)oll indie romcom.

Were you disappointed that there was no rom?

"I like you, Patches."
"I like you too Frances."

a great movie about a magic pixie girl

After a while you forget about the magic and that she's a six inch pixie with dragonfly wings. Thats the real triumph of Gerwig's performance.

she also doesn't exist to be contingent to some man, to help some dude find his inner freedom or creativity or something

i actually don't think she fulfills that archetype at all. she's a character you actually rarely see written for women: the loveable fuck-up.

still thought these characters were impossibly juvenile for folks in their mid-late 20s

come to Brooklyn sometime!

Slocki otm.

also, i don't really get the "impossible juvenile" criticism. like, would it be a better film if frances has a full time job she took seriously, paid all of her bills on time, and never ate gluten? would the world be a better place if all twentysomethings were like that?

that depends

great answer.

Perhaps amateurist shouldn't have said they were impossibly juvenile for their mid-late twenties. Perhaps he ought to have said they were unbearably juvenile for their mid-late twenties.

that's worse, almost. i thought they were fine. benjy et al were obviously privileged and i felt sort of jealous of them, but to be honest, it seems weird and corporate to insist that people who aren't hurting anyone be "more responsible" just for the sake of it. in an ideal society, everyone would have more time to loaf around, read books, and figure out how they feel about things, not less.

there are better ways to define "more responsible" than you seem to have in mind

that depends on whether any of the characters have a gluten intolerance or celiac disease.

i guess i have love for my fellow millenials who don't know what they want from life yet, and might be harboring unrealistic dreams. life is confusing.

also, fuck narrow definitions of "responsibilty"

Youuuuuuuuuuú

gluten is p bad for everyone at this point i think

well I bought some gluten free granola and it kind of tasted like sawdust mixed with honey, but it wasn't too bad, tbh

As Seth Rogen said in This is the End gluten is what we call anything that's bad for us.

nobody wants gluten! that's why they call it gluten!

it's my impression that gluten will go the way of over the counter heroin within five years

i meant mostly that they talk like 10-year olds. i don't care if they have jobs or not.

"omg are we besties" and stuff like that. "tell me the story of us."

meh, sillytalk during sex sounds bad outta context too

but the whole movie was this

that's how twentysomething women talk, in my experience. i thought the dialogue was convincing. people are goofy and unguarded around their close friends.

i appreciate your clarification concerning your use of the term "juvenile," though.

was amused to learn nebbishy "undateable" roomie plays Bugsy Siegel on Boardwalk Empire.

is boardwalk empire worth watching?

for about a season and a half.

The banter btw Frances and the roommate = best part of the movie.

Which roommate?

benjy

I liked this more than I thought I would. It WAS strikingly like watching a long episode of Girls, but with emotional depth I find lacking in Lena Dunham. The friendship itself was a little bit unbelievable, but mostly because of the co-star, who I found unlikeable and somehow just didn't seem like the person who would be Gerwig's best friend. Whereas Gerwig made the attachment, and the loneliness, extremely believeable. The Paris trip was one of the saddest sequences I ever remember seeing in a film.

i really loved the part when she goes back to vassar to work at a summer camp and is self-conscious about how old she is compared to her co-workers. wrenching

Yeah that was great I thought. It kind of pushed the loserdom in directions that movies don't usually push it, but that felt real and believeable.

I really thought she might kill herself at some points. Like if this wasn't an American film and wasn't a Baumbach film I might have thought it was going there.

haha really? i thought she seemed really well-adjusted... like, her life can get hopeless by objective measures but it doesn't take much for her to start enjoying things because she is not a depressive personality.

Um, she was a depressive!

Plus the film alluded to it at least twice -- the bathtub scene and the teetering on the edge of the water in Paris scene.

Two things I thought were really amazing about the Paris sequence: (1) I don't remember ever seeing another film that, instead of romanticizing Paris, deliberately portrays it in a boring light (even at times making it look not much different from Brooklyn) and (2) she doesn't exchange words with anyone the entire time -- even the bookshop keeper merely wags her finger instead of speaking.

i'd need to watch it again. to me it seemed like she was kind of a confused, aimless youth dealing with the fact that she wasn't "moving forward" in the way her peers were, and this caused desperation, but i didn't feel like she was ever teetering on the edge of the abyss or anything

maybe she was never actually suicidal, but she certainly came off as depressed

what did you think of this movie compared to greenberg and the squid and the whale? because of the black and white and some other stylistic choices it felt less oppressively real than those filmes -- which i had in mind watching this -- and this might have been part of the reason i didn't think she seemed that unhappy. my brother vastly preferred this movie to the others but i'm not sure.

i really loved the part when she goes back to vassar to work at a summer camp and is self-conscious about how old she is compared to her co-workers. wrenching

― fervently nice (Treeship), Saturday, July 27, 2013 10:58 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i've been in her boat (and may be again) and this hit home. her constant need to "explain" why she was in her late 20s and working there.

jesus my internship last summer. the girl who sat next to me was in high school.

she did seem depressed, though given the slouchy, self-deflating personae that surrounded her, it wasn't easy to tell.

xpost

you just have to be kind of zen about it + don't even try to make friends.

i think i am too close to her experiences to be objective. i think in her circumstances, she held up well, and carried herself with wit and dignity even though she was self-deprecating sometimes.

like, she didn't let herself get too down on herself, to the point where she would really be stuck, in my view. and in the end she was doing ok.

at the end she triumphs and people like her art--we learn she is actually talented, despite everything leading up to it seeming to imply otherwise. this is unrealistic since most people aren't talented.

or happy

idk if it was that unrealistic. the people praising her performance were her friends for the most part, and they liked it because they like her, which seemed realistic. i think she was just going to go on to be a mid-level dance instructor, not a major choreographer.

also, to say that things don't get better is to deny the voice of the people, who have spoken on this issue. Do you think things are going to get better or worse?

I don't think it was unrealistic -- the film doesn't imply that she's some kind of brilliant choreographer who has finally found her niche. If antyhing I think it suggests her as someone likely to continue to work day jobs while arranging her occasional little dance performances. She is "talented" but not remarkably so.

i'm still disappointed that baumbach deviated from his original script, which was to cut from the final scene at vassar -- when the best friend leaves in the car with patches -- directly to this title card:

http://images.cafepress.com/image/31560864_400x400.jpg

Seeing the trailer two or three times kept me away from this for weeks, but there was an afternoon rep showing today, and I ended up liking it more than I expected--may even see it a second time. Not that I should be surprised, but the trailer takes all the cute stuff and packs it into two minutes of cuteness overload. The tone is much more even throughout the whole film.

Frances is a nice addition to all the lost female characters I've connected with in movies. There've been many, though I'm blanking out right now. (Liza Minnelli in The Sterile Cuckoo and Holly Hunter in Broadcast News come to mind...they're not very good matches, I know.) Loved the last five minutes: Frances' dance production reminded me of the end of Rushmore. (Stuff in movies is always reminding me of other stuff in movies: Rachel, Frances's substitute Sophie, reminded me of the young Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter.) Wish Baumbach had used something other than "Modern Love"--I got through it the first time without hating it--but that's a quibble. I had to check afterwards to see who Dean Wareham was. Spencer--don't remember that character, so I still don't know.

omg i loved this

yea its a good movie

The feeling of being in NYC with oblivious-to-your-budget rich kids, they nailed it

Yes. Baumbach should have used this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg979_PfWiM

If I don't like Girls but think Damsels In Distress is one of the best films of the last...30 years, will I like this?

sure

I mean I don't like girls either

oh you

more like frances BLAH

right

I liked this a lot and have mixed feelings about "Girls." Also I love Greta Gerwig.

Watched the beginning of this, seems good. Like the Woody Allen/Manhattan look

this whole movie my wife and i were like GET A JOB LADY and in the end she gets a job so that's good i guess?

She had a job at the beginning of the movie and kind of had a job through the middle of the movie too.

Just bein' pedantic.

yeah but they were quirky dream-following jobs, not a quiet acceptance of failure job. which was immediately thrown under the bus by her rapid success in the competitive field of modern dance choreography

But she wouldn't have found success in that if she hadn't accepted failure as a dancer. And the success seemed rather modest anyway.

how much this chick gotta suffer adam?

I saw a sitcom or sketch recently where a guy takes a woman to Paris or some exotic European city and due to jet lag and poor scheduling of flights they end up sleeping through most of the trip, which was very reminiscent of the beginning of Frances' Paris trip. But I can't remember what show it was.

My favorite part of this quite good movie: it's less than 90 minutes.

portlandia?

xpost

Ah yeah I think it was Portlandia, good call.

how much this chick gotta suffer adam?

more! or... i think the story from taking shitty job to choreographic success is probably more compelling than the story that is told, which struck me as the same sort of romanticization of the neurotic and self-indulgent that baumbach's been retelling for years now.

My favorite part of this quite good movie: it's less than 90 minutes.

― the objections to Drake from non-REAL HIPHOP people (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 18, 2013 6:04 PM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark

Gimme The Loot is one my favourites of the year for this reason (it's 79 mins)

I guess I like the neurotic and self-indulgent.

I met a lass the other night who seemed quite Gerwiggy.

life, liberty and the quiet acceptance of failure

struck me as the same sort of romanticization of the neurotic and self-indulgent that baumbach's been retelling for years now.

I thought Baumbach kind of went out of his way not to do this. Overall the tone of the movie seemed deliberately ambivalent about the main character: like are you supposed to admire her or pity her?

is frances ha her name?

It's part of her name, the final shot of the film explains the title. I won't spoil it for you.

i was just wondering -- probably never going to see this regardless

You should -- it's less than 90 minutes. Endorsement enough.

this is a very good movie that is nearly impossible to describe without making it sound totally insufferable

life, liberty and the quiet acceptance of failure

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Monday, November 18, 2013 3:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the new title of a mets blog

There is a lot of juggernauts I haven't seen but this is shaping to be my film of the year.

it sounds like The Charisma of Greta Gerwig, The Movie, which i believe i will pass on for now.

Actually, I thought she was kind of under-utilized in this, esp. her comic chops. This was a bit dry for my taste, but Baumbach usually is. I preferred Damsels in Distress a ton as a Gerwig showcase.

I know it sounds weird to say someone is under-utilized in a movie in which they are onscreen almost the entire time.

gerwig so awesome in damsels. never got around to seeing this cuz i'm a baumbach skeptic at best and that nyer profile really turned me off these two (much love for jennifer jason leigh) but it's short and it's on netflix so maybe.

more like Dumsels. that movie blew assholes... its not a patch on noba's fraha

Damsels bizarre idea of comedy reminded me of Andie MacDowell in Hudson Hawk

said it before, say it again, DID is probably the most convincingly surreal American drama (as opposed to Lynchian horror) I've ever seen in my goddamned life

You say surreal drama, I say failed comedy

Absolutely adored DID. A rare example of a movie that got better and better and better the more it went on, to the extent where I'm obsessing over it now. I see very few films that create and sustain their own reality like this - I would even describe it as one of the few genuinely surrealistic American films of recent years. A gentler, more polite, more naively prone to snobbery yes perhaps but more compassionate reality, where the impossibility of all the characters - the nobly dumb fratboys, the perpetually self-possessed (even in despair) damsels, especially Violet, whose brazen, luminous impossibility is allowed to tear through the fabric of our given reality by that glorious ending. So yes - a film with no obligation to fulfil any logic but its own.

― imago, Thursday, 17 January 2013 20:26 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a Bunuel college flick y'all

ok ok I'll watch it again
really different flavour than the realistic Frances Ha, though, which seems to be aimed at eliciting "I know, right"s out of creatives who've lived/worked in that city

Damsels bizarre idea of comedy reminded me of Andie MacDowell in Hudson Hawk

― flamboyant goon tie included, Monday, November 18, 2013 8:34 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

Damsels rules so hard. I can see it not being to every taste though. You must have a high tolerance for silliness. I totally agree with it being one of the few films of recent memory that fully inhabits its own dream-like logic (Tree of Life is another).

Plus it has Adam Brody saying he would be gay if only gay people were still like Oscar Wilde.

Liked this a lot. Thought that the b/w actually helped as her life feels more and more uninhabited. Loved how the movie was broken up into just sets of addresses - could really relate to that.

Paris trip sequence terrific.

This was astonishingly bad

Just a warning to ppl out there who haven't seen the movie and read this thread

This was astonishingly bad

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, December 11, 2013 1:03 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was so in love with her roommate I didn't notice her.

Alumni party scene shot Vassar alumni house

Shot at

I thought this was much more enjoyable than it had any right to be. Definitely better than Greenberg.

i liked greenberg, even if it was a little too typically indie. i preferred squid and the whale. found frances ha affecting just for the life crisis/career crisis stuff, and felt empathic towards greta gerwig's character (but only after that dinner table scene, up to then, she was unbearably smug), but i also mostly just hate her (didnt mind her in damsels though, just because there i think she actually moved past her default mode a bit), and couldnt get past my hatred for how flat and 1D she is as an actress. i dont mind quirky, but shes just much too knowing. can she actually even act? her whole thing in so many films ive seen with her seems to be about how we are in on the act of her trying to act, like 'look at me acting!' good things about this film - its like an old 70s/80s new york film - the guys look like theyre from an old jim jarmusch movie. funny how we dont see actors (italian/european/'ethnic-white') who look like that anymore. but when will directors realise that making your film in black and white (esp DIGITAL B&W) does not instantly give your film profundity or depth.

"Squid and the Whale" remains the best Baumbach film by miles and miles.

OTM but Frances Ha would probably be No. 2 for me.

Ditto. I watched K&S again a few months ago and could barely finish it.

Squid and the Whale really is a great movie and seems way beyond his other work.

I realize there's another thread for it, but am I missing out by not seeing Margot At The Wedding?

Margot is the only film of his I haven't liked.

It's not bad but it made me feel pretty shitty. Maybe partially because I saw it at a matinee in an affluent suburb and it was me and about 10 senior citizens.

It's awesome

Margot was how I discovered Karen Dalton's "Something on Your Mind," and that would have been enough for me right there. There were other things I liked too--the kid's performance is one thing that comes to mind. Didn't affect me as much as The Squid and the Whale, though.

I have this half-baked theory about Baumbach films that the divorce-damaged kids in Squid and the Whale are sympathetic because they're kids, but that Baumbach's other characters tend to be like kids from the same experience and milieu who are older but never really grew up, and they stop being as sympathetic.

Margot was how I discovered Karen Dalton's "Something on Your Mind,

Let Me Make You A Cool Mixtape direction

Well...throw in Kenneth Anger and the guy who made Mean Streets and Who's That Knocking at My Door, too.

I think he's an indie "it" guy but this movie is the only place i can think of where he was dreamy. On Girls his character can be pretty dark at times, and is always a little "off" and not in a cute way.

― Treeship, Tuesday, May 28, 2013 8:38 AM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

way late on this, but false^

also GG looks like nellie mckay

gg got a gg nom

I'm sort of agnostic about Baumbach - his movies get really close to something I like/appreciate/get something out of, and I can't tell if that's ironically what makes them good or what makes them, you know, fall short - but his pile of glass gag in "Kicking and Screaming" is one of my all time favorite jokes.

Wasn't a dedicated Gerwig thread, so.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/greta-gerwig-star-cbs-how-679633

ok i am gonna call that 'how i met greta gerwig' from now on, i don't care if that doesn't make sense

this movie sucked 1 butt

Pretty, but aggravating. Something like the cinematic equivalent of what its prettiest (yet sill aggravating) character might call "undateable."

fantastic movie! i'm amazed this thread hasn't been revived for a year.

anyway check this if you liked the film, and avoid it like the plague if you didn't. Gerwig goes through *all 42* takes of the 28 seconds-long 'scene in the bathroom' (which she co-wrote) making notes on each one. in the end Baumbach went back and used 'Take 29' anyway, having made his actors go through a full hour of unnecessary re-takes. i don't think i've read a piece like it before, ever.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/one-scene-42-takes-and-2-hours-in-a-bathroom-stall.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

trailer for the new one seems really whit stillman (like, more so than usual) - quite excited

he doesn't sit about that lad.

we can start a nu thread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=TL-B8SdE6D0

god, this is stilted - I don't expect better of Gerwig, but Baumbach feels like he's regressing the more contact he has with mumblecore people

frances ha > while we're young > mistress america is a v good run of movies imo fyi

baumbach is the closest thing to rohmer that currently exists and roughly no one presently cares but whatever i guess

deserves its own thread

Clearly Hong Sang Soo is the modern Rohmer. And I care a lot about that being acknowledged!

NB not really anywhere close to ER

and yeah you ppl have to get less fucking lazy about starting threads

what about greenberg

noah baumbach is the closest thing to 2004 - 2007 woody allen that currently exists, kinda like late woody allen only with less visual finesse. frederik one trillion percent otm.

noah baumbach is the closest thing to 2004 - 2007 woody allen that currently exists,

no need to be insulting

I liked this movie. Baumbach and Gerwig push whimsy so far out that it's in danger of just drifting away yet it never does. Some of the best dialogue I've heard in an American movie too.

frances Ha or MIstress America?

just saw the latter - some really LOL moments at the ex's house in that one.

MA. The ex's house scenes are choreographed like a ballet (Dean Wareham is the only sour note).

yeah otm. baumbachs timing / dialogue / editing have been so strong in these last few

even like throw away lines just ring perfectly to me like when they first arrive at the connecticut house and the guy is like "holy shit those pregnant women are super smart"

YOU PPL BETTER NOT BE TALKIN BOUT MISTRESS AMERICA

whadya mean "YOU PPL"

i loved when the leftover pregnant lady finally acknowledged that they kept offering her alcohol to drink

Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig's "Mistress America"

Not sure if I hated Damsels in Distress or just wasn't in the mood for it. I like the film before it and like some of the film after it, so I don't think Noel Baumbach's gone off the Wes Anderson deep end. Megalyn Echikunwoke was incredibly beautiful. Thought for sure I spotted Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under in a classroom scene, but she's not listed in the credits, so I guess not. Still haven't seen Mistress America.

? damsels in distress is a whit stillman movie

Um, oops...the whole time I'm thinking, "This is the same guy that made The Squid & the Whale." And I almost made mention of the Metropolitan allusions.

I don't think it changes my reaction to the film, although it does help explain a lot.

#NotAllGerwigsAreBaumbachs

Although to be fair this thread at times served as a "Rolling Greta Gerwig" one.

Interesting experiment, though...That's the first time I've ever sat through an entire film thinking it was someone other than the actual director. And of course it would have altered my reaction if I'd remembered it was Stillman. I don't know that I would have liked it any more, but I certainly would have had an easier time getting my head around it.

dunno why I've never met a Benji

I just watched this for the first time. I hated it. Maybe it's already aged poorly? I am now hate reading glowing reviews of this when it came out.

what does aging poorly mean?

My issues with the movie seem to have already been mentioned in this thread (I just read through it). GG is charming but the character is unsubstantial and basically a really pleasant idiot at 27. I feel like I used to enjoy movies like this more. I liked the first couple of seasons of Girls, I still like Kicking and Screaming. Now it just all invokes Kendall Jenner giving the police a pepsi in the middle of a protest. I did enjoy the Paris scenes (this should've just been a longform commercial for Miu Miu or something) and Dean and Britta. I am also remembering a conversation I had with a well known music critic a long time ago when the show Felicity was still on air. I thought the show would've totally been his jam but he hated it because he had to see boring, overprivileged white NYU students every day so why would he want to also suffer through watching it on tv.

I am now talking about this movie with A friend who is a huge Greta Gerwig fan. "So, I know how much you hate Fleabag, I was watching Frances Ha and I finally understood why you hate Fleabag so much." Her "You know I hated Frances Ha, right? With the heat of a thousand white hot suns!"

saw this for the first time last night and found it very affecting. was really mesmerized by gerwig and her awkward sincerity, the way she speaks to strangers as if they’ve been friends for years, her love for dancing even though she’s awful at it, that aimless trip to paris, how deeply she longs to be loved while simultaneously lacking any real interest in romance

I like it more with each re-viewing. I always forget Dean Wareham's in it.

watched this again last night. what a perfect little movie — the goodness of frances is almost too much to bear

I'm still crushing on her roommate.

Loved this movie

On Netflix again! Still love it.

annual rewatch tonight. I just adore everyone in this movie so much

since there is no dedicated claudia weill thread, I’ll use this one to wholeheartedly recommend GIRLFRIENDS (1978), in many ways a blueprint for FRANCES HA, and mumblecore in general. would be shocked if it wasn’t a favorite of gerwig’s

Thanks for the revive. I showed FH last week to students -- they adored it.

Lena Dunham shouted out Girlfriends and its influence on her in this Criterion Closet video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqpRsEF6Gn8

Not everybody saw Girlfriends, but everyone who did in the 2000s made an indie film.

I hadn't heard of Girlfriends until it was on the Criterion Channel a couple of years ago, but it went away before I could watch it. Def seems like something I'd like.