[RE]View: Frances Ha (2012)

Image from IFC Films

This is a new series called “[RE]View” in which I review movies that I have previously seen and either disliked or downright hated upon first watch to see if my opinions have changed or remained the same.

I first watched Baumbach’s sixth film on Netflix in 2013. I was at the end of my senior year of high school and was preparing to go off to college in Charleston, South Carolina at the mid-sized, liberal arts College of Charleston. I remember feeling extremely irritated when the credits began to roll. I wondered why Frances couldn’t just get her shit together already? I mean she’s an adult, right? And living in New York City! Grow up, Frances!

I fully recognize and admit now that this was my conservatism and privilege talking. It wasn’t until I was in college that I became more independent and liberal and learned to expand my worldview and peer group to include more artists and teachers, BIPOC and LGBTQ people, and people from all corners of the country and class system. 

I had made my way through all of Baumbach’s films over the last year and decided to give Frances Ha another go. On this watch, I was pleasantly surprised to find much more to like about it! Greta Gerwig, Baumbach’s muse and now partner, stars as Frances, a charming but awkward 27-year-old aspiring dancer living in New York City with her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner). It’s beautifully shot in black-and-white, which I usually dislike and find false in modern-day films, but in this case, it creates a feeling of disconnect from reality, like a dream or a memory, almost the same way that the burst to color in The Wizard of Oz works. The city of New York is a character in itself, like in most of Baumbach’s films, and there’s an iconic needle drop in the middle of the film that actively gave me goosebumps, and was a clear inspiration for one of the first scenes in last year’s Little Women, a Gerwig-led adaptation and already one of my favorites of all time.

The first ten minutes of the movie give us the perfect understanding of who both Sophie and Frances are without either of them going into obvious expository dialogue about each other. We know that Sophie and Frances do almost everything together and just simply enjoy each other’s company, we know that every night Frances watches a movie in Sophie’s bed until they both fall asleep and that Sophie has a thing about Frances wearing socks in her bed.

I didn’t realize back in 2013 that this isn’t a rom-com, nor is it a story about Frances getting over a breakup in the traditional sense (she and her boyfriend break up over a dispute about living arrangements and hairless cats in the first ten minutes of the film as well). The REAL breakup story is between Frances and Sophie. At its heart, Frances Ha is about the ebbs and flows of female friendship and how difficult it can be when you hit different stages of life at different times and grow apart. I saw a lot of my best friend and myself in Sophie and Frances, from their interactions and jokes to Frances insisting that Sophie not “treat [her] like a three-hour brunch friend” because she knows everything about her, to the way Frances describes herself and Sophie as “the same person but with different hair”.

Baumbach further solidifies his place as the most talented writer of authentic characters in Hollywood. Every single conversation and interaction between characters, especially between Frances and Sophie, in Frances Ha feels completely authentic. The dialogue is witty, but never pretentious. Frances’ humor isn’t formulaic or contrived, but it is specific and odd and doesn’t connect with many people. When she goes on a date with Lev, (played by Adam Driver in his all-too-brief cameo) he jokes that he’s not going to sleep with her when Frances offers to pay for the dinner. A confused and embarrassed Frances says that she isn’t trying to sleep with him and Lev shoots back wryly “I know I was pretending to be a liberated woman”, and Driver sells it like he’s selling water to a drowning man. 

It was clearer to me this time around that Frances goes on an almost Odyssean journey through the film. She meets Lev and Benji, the devil-may-care, rich artists who she crashes with after Sophie moves to Tribeca. She’s in awe of them, the rich New York millennials, who are “like magic”, who have or can get anything they want, the haves to her have-not. When she can no longer afford the rent at their place, she crashes with Rachel, a dancer in the company Frances is a part of, who is the antithesis of Sophie in almost every way. While staying with Rachel, she attends a dinner party with all of Rachel’s sophisticated, older, and more put-together friends. It’s clear Frances doesn’t belong in this scene and she’s uncomfortable around these people with financial jobs and stability. She leaves rather abruptly after giving a heartfelt speech about what she wants from a partner and life in general and they all genuinely wish her the best on her journey as an artist and as a person. She defeats every monster and obstacle each time and gleans something from everyone she encounters until she learns to take responsibility for her actions and becomes the designated adult when she’s the oldest person working at her old college over the summer.

While Frances still slightly irritates me, on first watch I downright despised her. I found her ditzy and obnoxious, and I got the worst case of second-hand embarrassment from watching her stumble through the film. In general, I’m not a fan of Gerwig’s acting, and sometimes find she’s trying too hard to accentuate how earnest and quirky she is. On this watch, I found her much more endearing. She’s still slightly ditzy, but nearly 25-year-old me is much more sympathetic towards her admitting, “I’m not a real person yet” than 17-year-old me was. I understand the struggle of a young artist trying to make her way in a big city. I understand the fear and bittersweet sadness in her eyes as she waves goodbye to her parents in the Sacramento airport while the escalator climbs, knowing that she’s leaving the warmth and safety of the “known” behind and returning to the unpredictable city, where dreams are harder to attain than she thought. Frances is so determined to go all the way and become a dancer that she will accept no substitutes; she will be a full-time dancer in a company or she’ll float across New York sleeping on people’s couches. I understand her desire to do something fulfilling and big on her own. And eventually, Frances learns what I learned towards the end of my college career: Your dreams are not so clear-cut and simplistic. You never have to sacrifice them entirely for a 9 to 5, nor do you have to sacrifice financial stability for being a starving artist. Sometimes you can be a dreamer and a realist and there’s nothing wrong with either.