Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 13 May

Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012)

After all this time I am now utterly immune to the teas­ing I get from friends when I men­tion that I atten­ded the 2012 Telluride Film Festival. It was a sem­in­al event in my life and I take any chance I get – in these pen­uri­ous times – to remind myself that it actu­ally happened.

The first screen­ing I went to of Frances Ha at Telluride was actu­ally the world première but there were sound prob­lems that caused under­stand­able (and vis­ible) dis­tress to co-creator and star of the film, Greta Gerwig.

I picked it up again later dur­ing the festival’s “catch-up Monday” and wrote this a couple of days later:

Frances Ha also seemed thin while I was watch­ing it but has actu­ally haunted me a lot more than oth­er films I saw this week­end, tricky little blight­er. Greta Gerwig (also co-writer) plays an unsuc­cess­ful dan­cer try­ing to make it in New York and hav­ing her nat­ur­al optim­ism chal­lenged at every turn. A kind of comedy-of-hipster-manners, it evid­ently is being com­pared to the TV series Girls (which I haven’t seen) but seems to stand well-enough alone in my opinion.

The lumin­ous black and white pho­to­graphy (look­ing like early Jarmusch) makes New York seem other-worldly, which is an odd thing to be typ­ing while I’m actu­ally sit­ting here in New York. Like I said, I’ve found myself think­ing about this one a lot more than I expec­ted and I’d like to see it again. Will it get NZ audi­ences? Maybe, but would go down really well at some­thing like the Showcase.

While I was in Telluride I attemp­ted some lame celebrity photography:

Anyway, a year later Frances Ha did get a loc­al release:

The black and white can’t help but remind you of anoth­er great New York story, Allen’s Manhattan, but it – and the choice of Delerue’s music – also harks back to the French New Wave and the film tries to be sim­il­arly light on its feet.

Gerwig plays Frances, 20-something Manhattanite, still upbeat about her pro­spects as a dan­cer and cit­izen of the city that nev­er sleeps des­pite the grow­ing evid­ence that she doesn’t actu­ally have what it takes. If you can make it there, you can make it any­where, the song tells us, but what do you do if you can’t?

I’m not sure how gen­er­ally applic­able her story is – I’ve heard any­thing in a range from “quite” to “very” – but it cer­tainly works spe­cific­ally and Gerwig (co-writer) simply owns one of the great New York char­ac­ters. It’s over a year since I saw Frances Ha, con­sidered it a bit dis­pos­able at first, but moments keep com­ing back to me – there’s not many films I can say that about.

Also fea­tured in that September 2013 column: Diane Kruger as Marie Antoinette in Farewell, My Queen; Kristin Scott-Thomas in French drama Looking for Hortense; Kick-Ass 2 (which I liked bet­ter than the nasty first Kick-Ass); The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (“cast more on price than on tal­ent”); ensemble drama Tasting Menu which was a rare walk-out for me; and Joss Whedon’s excel­lent Much Ado About Nothing (which was shot in his house in 12 days while he was edit­ing The Avengers).

Where to watch Frances Ha

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from AroVision or stream­ing on Beamafilm (from par­ti­cip­at­ing libraries)

Australia: Streaming on Beamafilm (from par­ti­cip­at­ing libraries)

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video, Crave, Criterion Channel, Mubi or IFC Films Unlimited

Ireland: Streaming on Mubi or Prime Video

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on Criterion Channel, Philo, Mubi or IFC Films unlimited

UK: Streaming on Prime Video, Mubi or BFI Player