2013 Year in Review: Movie of the Year, Frances Ha

Sometimes you find something that is so incredibly great that you can’t help but hate it a little. 

 

I wouldn’t even pretend that I’ve see enough movies from this past year to give the title of “Movie of the Year” definitively to any film.  But what I do know is Frances Ha is the most exceptional and relatable film I’ve seen in theaters in a long, long time.  Relatable, not just to myself, but to a generation.

Frances Ha may not be a movie for every single person between the ages of 21-35, but it certainly is for anyone who has ever felt the urge to create something, the need to be something, with no real idea of how.  Particularly if you live in New York City, and especially particularly if you live in Brooklyn.

Directed by Brooklyn art movement’s patron saint of film Noah Baumbach (Squid and Whale) and starring his girlfriend, Greta Gerwig (Lola Vs.), Frances Ha has been compared many times over to Lena Dunham’s HBO hit show, Girls.  The two are similar in many ways, ripe with sarcastic humor, awkward moments, and youthful energy but Frances Ha surpasses Girls with its sincerity.  Where Girls disenchants some with it’s perceived pretentiousness, Frances Ha endears its audience with its sweetness.  It is fitting that Frances Ha be a black and white film, reminiscent of the timeless quality of Woody Allen’s classics Manhattan and Broadway Danny Rose that turns the city of New York itself into a character.

 

Excellently paced and just under an hour and a half, one of the most disappointing things I might say about Frances Ha is that it is over all too quickly.  The efficiency in story telling is quite possibly the most envious dimension of the stellar script written by Baumbach and Gerwig.

The story is filled with magnificently written characters that you would swear you know in your own life, even if they only populate the screen for a single scene.  One of the great guilty pleasures of watching the film comes from these characters and the secret comfort that at least your life isn’t this much of a mess.  But then, you have to ask yourself, “Wait, it isn’t right?”

The story begins with the protagonist, Frances, drifting through life in the city, dreaming big and living small.  She’s a free spirit but a lost soul.  A vibrant but silly girl, that you’re drawn to in the same way you’re drawn to a train wreck.  The inciting incident comes when her best friend moves out of her apartment forcing Frances to go out and actually make something of her life.  It becomes sink or swim.  She struggles at first, but the message of Frances Ha is hope; learning never to lose enthusiasm for the things you love no matter where you end up.

You watch Frances Ha and it does more than entertain you, it inspires you to do the things you love.  That’s why it is a great movie, and my Movie of the Year.