FRANCES HA Review

Noah Baumbach's "Frances Ha" is the writer and director's best film to date. A black-and-white French New Wave inspired piece that's honest and telling, funny and smart, wry and sad, effervescent and fulfilling. In short, it's a masterwork of independent cinema. Baumbach's writing partner and real life girlfriend Greta Gerwig have proved a dynamic dream team. As an actress, Gerwig has never been better. First introduced in Baumbach's lesser "Greenberg," here as the titular Frances she is self-deprecating, awkward, clumsy, hapless, yet attractive, charming and endearing. "Frances Ha" is not only razor sharp about the anxiety of post-college life but, even more, about the complexity of female friendship -- two topics which, once combined, tap into something much deeper about coming-of-age at a time in life when someone's supposed to have already come of age.

Frances is like Hannah Horvath of "Girls" a few more years down the road, floundering trying to find her purpose in New York. She lives with her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), from college who she knows inside and out. As they put it, they're like an old lesbian couple who doesn't have sex anymore. When asked by her boyfriend to move in with him, Frances shrinks away using her loyalty to Sophie and not wanting to break their lease as an excuse to not commit. Unbeknownst to her, however, Sophie is already planning to end the lease and move out into her dream neighborhood of Tribeca with another girlfriend. This shock to her system sends Frances floating in the universe on her own, coasting along with too little money and too many temporary roommates.

She bunks with Sophie's friends, Lev (Adam Driver) and Benji (Michael Zegen), while trying to stay afloat at her dance company whose director is gradually and nicely trying to edge Frances out even if she fails to realize it. When asked what she does for work, Frances says it's complicated. "Because what you do is complicated?" "Because I don't really...do it," she responds. One of Lev's nightly female visitors tells Frances at breakfast she looks older than she is. Not wiser or more responsible, just an older face. This is the state Frances is in, and though watching her struggling journey can make you cringe, Baumbach infuses it with such graceful delight that you can't turn away.

The point is that Frances is in a downward spiral. She takes a brief reprieve from her free fall to visit her parents (played by Gerwig's actual parents) back home in Sacramento for Christmas. It's a brilliantly constructed sequence, a flurry of family gatherings, warm conversation and familial feelings until next thing Frances knows, she's back at the airport waving goodbye. What follows is Baumbach not shying away from bleakness by having Frances subvert the typical girl traveling to find herself by giving her the most depressing trip to Paris imaginable.

What's to learn from Baumbach and Gerwig's "Frances Ha"? That everyone struggles to find what it is they're looking for in the first place; life can drift and lose direction, thus mirroring the film's very style; and above all, no matter how tight-knit or seemingly endless, friendships shift, change and dissipate at a moment's notice. And in the face of losing what once was your rock, your life raft, all we can do is learn to press on.

"Greenberg" (2010)

Ben Stiller was a risky choice to play Roger Greenberg in "Greenberg," the latest from writer-director Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale," "Margot at the Wedding"). It's not that Stiller doesn't pull it off, because he does, it's just that the idea behind the character is too flawed to begin with. Roger is a man who just got released from a mental hospital after having a breakdown. "Life is wasted on people," he says keeping himself distanced from healthy connections with other people. At the age of 40, he purposely does nothing with his life and spends his days writing complaint letters to companies like American Airlines and Starbucks. He would really just like to write a letter to the world telling about all the stupid people that inhabit it. He is mean and close-minded and the opposite of likable, and yet there is a girl who falls for him.

The girl is 25-year-old Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig) who is gentle and sweet. She is plain-looking but not unattractive, and although one may at first think she has low self-esteem, this is not the case. When Roger makes the mistake of telling her, "You have value," she gives him a look of disgust and responds, "I already knew that." It's not that Florence doesn't know what she wants; it's that she just hasn't gotten it yet. She wants a relationship, one that isn't just frivolous sex after sex. The question for us then becomes, why Roger Greenberg? Florence is the assistant to Roger's brother and his family, interacting with the kids and the dog. She does the planning, buys the groceries and makes sure everything is in check. When the family heads off to vacation in Vietnam, that's when Roger moves in for a few weeks to house-sit while Florence occasionally drops by. Being an assistant always serving others, one would think Florence would like to do something for herself. What she finds in Roger isn't that but quite the opposite. A relationship with Roger is a huge undertaking.

The movie rightfully opens with a profile shot of Florence, and we're first introduced to her before getting sucked into the angry misery to the point of exhaustion involving Roger. He was part a band earlier in his life, one that he singlehandedly dismantled. Even upon reuniting with a former band member, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), Roger still doesn't get it. Ivan tries to help his friend the best he can, but you can't help those who don't want to be helped. Roger also meets up with his ex-girlfriend, Beth, who is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and while she only appears briefly in two scenes, she is greatly effective. The look she gives Roger signals to him that he is impossible, and we can't help but agree. There is one moment during a wild, teenage party thrown at the Greenberg household where we get insight into Roger's thinking. And while Stiller, in his equal bouts of rage and solace, makes Roger work as a character, it is Greta Gerwig who is the revelation. The fact that she convinces us that Florence could be interested in a person like Roger is a revelation in itself.

"Hurt people hurt people" seems to be the permeating theme, and Baumbach's other movies followed suit with "Margot at the Wedding" about feuding sisters and "The Squid and the Whale" about a bitter divorce. And while it's intriguing to watch these people figure themselves and each other out, here it gets more frustrating than anything else. It's hard to get into simply due to the turn-off provided by Roger, and even once you get past that and get settled in, it remains uneasy. Roger and Florence work together only to a certain level because we like her so much more than him. Whether Roger can finally cope or not is left unclear, but worst is that we end up not caring either way. "Greenberg" ends on a good note, a really good note, but by the end you're also a little too relieved it's over.

'The Emperor's Children' Gets An Adaptation

Claire Messud's critically-acclaimed 2006 novel, "The Emperor's Children" is getting a film adaptation that will star Keira Knightley, Eric Bana and Richard Gere.

I've personally read this novel and fell in love with it. It's a very mature, complex book about the changing relationships between a trio of 30-year-olds living in New York coping with the melding of their personal and professional lives.

The way the novel plays out, I would expect it to be difficult to adapt, and so luckily the director taking on this project is Noah Baumbach who recently released "Greenberg" starring Ben Stiller.

Baumbach's films are primarily about the quirky and dry relationships of white, upper-class people and so the content of this novel is ideal for him to adapt. I'm excited to say the least.