Sunday, January 18, 2009

Greta Gerwig's Mention In The New Yorker

Yeast


The reviews improve all the time:
It’s also been a great year for the actress Greta Gerwig, the intellectual-boho diva of the “mumblecore” movement, who co-starred in the Duplass brothers’ shaggy-dog horror film, “Baghead” (Sony), and, with Joe Swanberg, co-directed and co-starred in the romantic drama “Nights and Weekends.” Gerwig shines in the title role of Swanberg’s 2007 feature, “Hannah Takes the Stairs” (IFC Films), as a young playwright who works at a production company and gets involved in an office-romance triangle. The film’s documentary-style methods and rich improvisations—especially Gerwig’s—vividly portray the lives of young artists very much like the directors and actors themselves. The daringly spontaneous actress is also impressive in “Yeast” (available through Amazon video on demand), the first feature directed by Mary Bronstein, who co-starred in the year’s best indie feature—“Frownland,” directed by her husband, Ronald Bronstein. In “Yeast,” Gerwig and Mary Bronstein are joined by Amy Judd in the story of three artistic young New Yorkers struggling with love, money, and adulthood. The tight closeups and hectic handheld camerawork powerfully evoke the women’s outer constraints and inner chaos, and Gerwig does a passive-aggressive scene that deserves inclusion in movie anthologies and psychology textbooks.

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