"Frances Ha" - Friday Night At The Tower

Friday night, I went to see Greta Gerwig's new movie, "Frances Ha" at the Tower Theater. I liked it for its portrayal of an awkward period in one's life: a sort-of rebellion about accepting a lower position than one might like in life. A very mild version of "denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance." The IMDB plot summary is here:

Frances lives in New York, but she doesn't really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but she's not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren't really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness.

The movie features Greta's home, Sacramento's River Park neighborhood, too. It was nice seeing the city as an outsider. Her parents are in the film as well. The movie features Connor Mickiewicz (and presumably his dentist father, Tim, too), but as an illustration of how balkanized Sacramento Theater is, I haven't seen Connor since 'Babes in Arms' at the Woodland Opera House in - oh, was it 2000? - and I still haven't made it over to New Helvetia Theatre, so I didn't recognize him.:

Critics seem to like it (LA Times):

Effortless and effervescent, "Frances Ha" is a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true. It's both a timeless story of the joys and sorrows of youth and a dead-on portrait of how things are right now for one particular New York woman who, try as she might, can't quite get her life together.

...Though both Gerwig, a fixture on the New York independent scene who's moved on to bigger features, and Baumbach, Oscar-nominated for writing the marvelous "The Squid and the Whale," are known quantities on their own, they've increased their effectiveness by working together.

For the actress, a quicksilver presence with a fluid face who couldn't be more natural on screen, "Frances" is an opportunity to build a character of unexpected complexity. For the director, having a gifted collaborator able to be so completely present adds a lightness his films have not always had and has made possible an irresistible command of the moment.

If anyone lives completely in that moment, it is Frances, a 27-year-old apprentice dancer who is so many often contradictory things at once it's difficult to know where to begin — or end — in describing her.

Feckless and rootless, gawky and graceful, over-analytical and uncertain, always apologizing yet often oblivious, Frances is making a hash out of her own life because she doesn't know any better. If there is a wrong turn to be made, she will take it; if there is a way to sabotage herself, she will find it. A more or less disposable person for everyone she knows, she is aware that adult life is beyond her capacity at present. "I'm so embarrassed," she says. "I'm not a real person yet."

And yet there is something unmistakably endearing about Frances, something winning in her vulnerability and her pluck, the way she bounces back like a Joe Palooka toy from her many misadventures. She is unmistakably good-hearted, and it is impossible not to root for her as she throws herself into life and tries to determine if there can be a place there for her. Frances' woeful mantra in these struggles, which she brandishes whenever life's pressures become too great, is the defensive "I'm not messy, I'm busy."