Please note: This was screened in May 2023
Frances (Greta Gerwig) is a 27-year-old aspiring dancer, stuck in the uncertainty of that post-college phase of trying to figure out a ‘grown-up’ life in the messiness of New York, in Noah Baumbach’s witty, effortless comedy.
Gerwig plays Frances as a bundle of competing tendencies: playful, effervescent, fun; insecure, self-conscious, at times a little grating; sensitive, talented, unsure of herself but getting a little surer.
And it’s easy to see Gerwig’s performance as the animating spirit of Frances Ha—the one component of the film that feels as if it’s been torn from life, not from other movies. Its influences have little to do with the New Wave, and everything to do with the realities and uncertainties of young-adult experience.